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„ Xo. 22. 


May 5, 1894. Subscription Price, $2.50 



A MARTYR 
OF DESTINY 


U4HU4M* Mt'M* 4M , ^ -Mb ^g^^^^SiejSSgs^^k^M 

1-Monthly. Entered at the Post-Office at New York as second-class matter. 

I FENELON COLLIER. Publisher. 533 W. 13TH St« N.Y. 







PILLS 


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New York Depot, 365 Canal St. 3 





MARTYR OF DESTINY 


/ 



EDGAR FAWCETT 

Author of “A New York Family” “A Gentleman of 
Leisure ” “The New Nero,” “Social Silhou- 
ettes,” “The Evil That Men Do,” 

“An Ambitious Woman ” 



New York 

P. F. COLLIER, PUBLISHER 


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1894, by 
Edgar Fawcett, 

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 


Disease — still pursues those who 
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It is well to take Scott’s Emulsion when 
recovering from an illness, but it is bet- 
ter to take it in time and prevent the 
illness. 

Prepared by SG9TT & BOV/HE, N. Y, Druggists sell it. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


i. 

At Riverview, but a brief railway ride from 
New York, there are many lordly and beautiful 
homes, and there are not a few lowly and plain 
ones. Among the latter was a small cottage, 
close to the rather ugly and huddled little village 
itself, where Basil Moncrieffe dwelt with his 
friend, Magnus White wright. 

The two young men, each scarcely past his 
thirtieth year, were decisive opposites. Mon- 
crieffe had a tall figure, supple and virile ; White- 
wright was of medium stature, and almost 
ethereally slim. Moncrieffe carried himself with 
an air; Whitewright drooped his frame, though 
not his gaze. Moncrieffe had a scant, upcurving 
flaxen mustache, and a beard of the same hue, 
with its hairs all seeming to bend toward a point 
at the chin, like fibers of a corn-tassel toward its 
apex; Whitewright’s face was beardless and 
somewhat wasted, with a little hollow below 
it, made by the chronic looseness of his shirt-col- 
lar about a throat where the larynx gave too 
cumbrous a bulge and the pathetically fibrous 
tract just under this receded too far. Moncrieffe 

( 3 ) 


4 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


had brows of a good breadth, which overswept 
eyes bluer than gray in some lights, in others 
grayer than blue; Whitewright’s eyes were 
night itself, with just a pin-point of flame afloat 
in either pupil. 

Their coming together, like this, here in River- 
view, had been both commonplace and strange. 
At the New York medical college where they 
had both studied to be physicians, they had 
hardly exchanged five words in as many months. 
Whitewright had looked haler, then, and not so 
wistfully interesting. A little while before their 
common graduation the subtle change of illness 
had come upon him. It was because Moncrieffe 
noticed this that a certain conversation occurred. 

“You’re a bit pulled down, aren’t you?” he 
said, one day, to his classmate. 

“Yes,” was the answer, with a smile oddly 
cheerful. “I’ve been expecting it, and it’s 
come.” 

“My dear fellow, what is it that you mean 
‘has come’?” And Moncrieffe dropped a hand 
on the other’s unrobust shoulder. 

Then, without a hint of self-pity, and indeed 
with a certain incongruous buoyancy, White- 
wright said that three of his sisters had died of 
consumption, that he was the only child left, and 
that his father’s dream of one day seeing him a 
successful physician would never be realized. 

“You don’t mean,” said Moncrieffe, with dis- 
mayed gravity, “that you think yourself really 
so far gone as that?” 

“Oh, I’m galloping off at a pretty quick rate.” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


5 


And here the young man laughed as if he had 
said something highly droll. There was not the 
faintest hint of affectation in his sunny way of 
looking straight at darkness — that last blackest 
of all darkness, too, from which the recoil of 
youth is so instinctive. “Dad’s the dearest old 
chap in the world,’ * he pursued, with a frank- 
ness that pained his listener like something 
bladed and cutting, “and when I do go I’m sure 
it will break him up very badly. You see, I’m 
not only the apple of his eye, nowadays, but lid, 
lashes and all. Mother died years ago, and it’s 
always been his dream to make me what he’d 
once have delighted to be himself — a medical 
man with a snug practice. He’s merely an 
apothecary at Riverview. Know Riverview?” 

“Only as a colony of palace-dwellers,” replied 
Moncrieffe. “I’ve nothing to take me into such 
luxurious dominions,” he added, with gentle 
serio-comedy. 

But, as it queerly turned out, he had this same 
Magnus Whitewright to take him there. These 
co-disciples, who had hardly done more than nod 
to one another till both were on the verge of se- 
curing their diplomas, all at once became inti- 
mate friends. Pity had a good deal to do with 
Moncrieffe’s first amical impulse. It compassion- 
ately thrilled him to see with what genial forti- 
tude Whitewright had accepted the somber des- 
tiny of an early death. Then, a little later, the 
sudden end of his father, the apothecary at Riv- 
erview, fed in Moncrieffe a growing admiration. 
White wright bore this keen bereavement as a 


6 


A MARTYR OP DESTINY. 


veteran of tried courage might bear an ugly shot- 
wound. 

“Nothing downs you,” said to him the young 
man who was now every day growing his faster 
friend. “If death doesn’t, I suppose poverty 
wouldn’t. But you haven’t poverty to fight, 
anyway. Thank God for that!” 

Whitewright caught the speaker’s hand, and 
wrung it with his white, bony fingers, hot below 
their pallor. “Thank you” he muttered, 
“Basil Moncrieffe, for thanking God on my 
account!” He let the dusk of his eyes, feminine 
yet manly in their look, dwell for a minute on 
Moncrieffe’s face, so healthfully the counterpart 
of his own. “Dad’s gone, now, and I’m still 
here. I may stumble on for some time yet. I 
begin to think my mortuary gallop is only a kind 
of light canter, after all. No, I haven’t got 
poverty to fight; there’s a moderate little pile of 
dollars hedged between myself and destitution.” 

“Just about my own case,” Moncrieffe re- 
turned. 

“Ah, yes, old boy. But you’ve got your am- 
bition in a splendid state of vitality. Mine’s 
dead, just as its former proprietor shortly ex- 
pects to be.” 

“Come, now, ’’began Moncrieffe, with a rally- 
ing mock-irritation. “I’ll live, Whitewright, 
to see you the"pet doctor of all those millionaires 
at Riverview.” 

“You’ll live to see yourself that, if you choose to 
quit the mad competition of this huge, fevered 
metropolis. There’s the little ancestral shanty 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


7 


of a drug-store, with its big pink and blue glass 
demijohns in the windows, that I used to coo- 
coo at when a baby. There’s also the little an- 
cestral shanty of a house where I was born. It’s 
decent enough, and with a few architectural 
Queen- Annish furbelows tacked on it, like dis- 
creet darns on a mature stocking, and with a 
few quick-growing vines made to muffle some 
of its more uncouth angularities, it could be 
turned, I think, passably pretty. How about a 
modest silver-plated decoration on one side of 
the front entrance, perpetuating this simple le- 
gend: Dr. B. Moncrieffe ?” 

“What!” came the stammered answer. “You 
can’t be thinking, Magnus — Yes, I see you 
are ! But then, you know, I’ve had such differ- 
ent views. I’ve dreamed, one might say — ” 

“Of superb fees from New York plutocrats. 
Of course you have; all young doctors do. But 
Riverview, as you’ve found out, has a number 
of New York plutocrats, and its two or three 
resident physicians are gentlemen of rather 
drowsy progressiveness. The whole modish 
suburb, my boy, might prove a facile stepping- 
stone to future metropolitan eminence.” 

“Very true.” And Moncrieffe gave to his 
tapering beard a fluttered hand-stroke. “But 
the other side of the doorway, Magnus? That, 
surely, should bear the name of Dr. M. White- 
wright .” 

“Not a bit of it, my friend. A tombstone will 
bear it before long, in a graveyard not far away. ” 

“How horrible!” 


8 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“It isn’t horrible tome,” smiled White wright. 
“I accept it with the serenest philosophy.” 

“I know you’re nothing if not stoical.” 

“I hope I’m nothing if not sersible. My poor 
old father sent me to Columbia College and made 
me what people would call the first gentleman in 
a race of humble provincialists. Then he had 
me trained in the study of medicine. So far so 
good. At the end of his loving educational ad- 
vancements, I heard the knell of doom sound in 
my spirit. It might have been a peal of joy- 
bells — as with your stalwart and energetic self. 
Well, it wasn’t, and I simply accept the immu- 
table fact that it wasn’t, and that the eternal 
mystery of things thus had decreed. Why not 
accept it? Why struggle and wriggle like a 
fly in a cobweb? Struggling and wriggling 
don’t either annoy or amuse the Spider that 
watches and waits. He’s implacable; he has 
two names ; one of them is Cause and the other 
is Effect. He is descended from an interminable 
race of spiders, all bearing precisely the same 
dual appellation. . . There’s so much in dying 
with dignity. It isn’t as if a fellow could take 
the affair in his own hands. Call it stoicism, if 
you please, but why not call it good taste?” 

“What a fatalist you are, Magnus! Napoleon 
wasn’t a greater one.” 

White wright gave a gay shrug. “Napoleon? 
Oh, he had a stout pair of lungs, and could ver- 
ify his theory by living. I must take mine on 
trust. I don’t so much mean it’s all being a 
severe necessity, a monstrous Must. I believe 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


9 


that, firmly enough; but just now I’d reference 
to the unimportance of everythiug. It’s a pro- 
digiously consoling outlook for a chap like me 
to take. Nothing particularly matters, because 
everything that could happen is so minute an aid 
to some gigantic scheme of whose machinery, as 
one might say, one sees only a faint little whirl- 
ing portion — hardly even that — the flicker of the 
shadow of the fragment of a cog-wheel, or yet, 
hardly even that ! A f ew centuries hence, aud 
though I might have lived till eighty the adored 
arch-practitioner of Riverview, my having laid 
young bones instead of old ones in the cemetery 
of which I told you will be no more than that 
canoe of the poet 

“ ‘Which crossed the b^som of a lonely lake 
A thousand years ago. ’ 

And so, my best of Basils, ’ ’ he went blithely on, 
“you will see me, if you care to come to River- 
view and look, placidly serving behind my little 
counter in the paternal shop, with my haughty 
soul humbled to the concoction of liver-pills and 
cough-mixtures, and all my past hopes of dis- 
tinction folded away in some cabinet- drawer of 
memory, like a lavendered waistcoat too dainty 
for rustic donning. ’ ’ 

4 f Magnus ! ’ ’ exclaimed Moncrieff e, 4 4 you can ’ t 
possibly intend to settle down as a country drug- 
gist — you /” 

But Whitewright did. Previous to this step, 
how r ever, Moncrieffe prevailed upon his friend to 
take with him a Western trip. For six months 


10 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


they lived together in the dry, pure, crystal air of 
a settlement among the Rocky Mountains, with 
peaks a hundred miles off that looked as if one 
might stroll between breakfast and luncheon 
along their shaggy sides. Here Whitewright 
grew markedly better. His spirits, too, gained 
in the way of easy levity, yet the note in them 
of what might be termed jovial despair neither 
waxed nor waned. 

“You’re tremendously improved,” Moncrieffe 
assured him, just before their return eastward. 
“Come, now, don’t you feel I’m right?” 

“Yes; I grant it.” 

“You haven’t coughed for a fortnight.” 

“True; it’s a kind of reprieve. My execution 
is postponed. You’re like a clever lawyer, 
Basil; you’ve got a stay of proceedings.” 

“I do wish, Magnus, that you’d let up on that 
death’s-head-and-cross-bones kind of jollity.” 

“I will. Anything to please you.” They had 
just selected their places in a drawing-room car. 
Before speaking again, Whitewright wreathed 
an arm about his companion’s neck, with a girl- 
ishly effusive way he had which the men he 
treated so (they were few) always liked and felt 
gladdened by. “How for something on your 
part that will please me.” 

His hearer at once perceived exactly what he 
meant. They talked it over as the train swept 
them to Chicago. During the rest of the journey 
Moncrieffe gave reluctant yet decisive consent. 

He was ambitious ; he believed himself able to 
start out in New York and hew his way with 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


11 


swift blows right to a starting-point of moderate 
success there as a practicing doctor. But, after 
all, as Whitewright had clearly put it, Riverview 
ivas an excellent stepping-stone. It was full of 
people who kept their fine houses open till almost 
the beginning of winter, and when winter came 
it still held no mean share of city magnates who 
had resolved to breast boreal rigors between 
walls whose comforts and luxuries robbed such 
defiance of the least rashness. Besides, Mon- 
crieffe had no ties of kindred to make him crave 
New York as a dwelling-place. His parents had 
died there years ago, and the small heritage they 
left him had fallen to an only child. Even his 
guardian, an elderly uncle, was now no more, 
and as for other relations, these w’ere all both 
unsympathetic and remote. 

It came to pass precisely as Whitewright had 
wished if not prophesied. They reached River- 
view in the first vague blush of April. Before 
the month was ended Moncrieffe had profession- 
ally though unassumingly announced himself to 
the township, and Whitewright, without a tinge 
of dejection, with a good deal of tranquil self- 
effacement, had taken from a trusted clerk the 
place of supervisor at his late father’s unpretend- 
ing little shop. Five minutes’ walk brought one 
to the doorway where now gleamed Moncrieffe’s 
name. By May the small house had begun to 
lose its grimness, touches of picturesque car- 
pentry having worked wonders with its gaunt 
exterior. Midsummer had scarcely come before 
Moncrieffe found himself distinctly more than 


12 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


a nominal guardian of the public health. His 
patients were mostly among the poor village- 
classes, at first, and though he had possessed 
himself of a good horse and a neat, newish-look- 
ing light- wagon, the demands upon him in the 
way of driving about with a country physician’s 
air of responsible employment staid cheerlessly 
few. But one evening there came a sudden 
change in what might be called the social tone 
of his patronage. He and Whitewright had just 
finished their six o’clock dinner, and had both 
come forth on the pretty porch which had re- 
cently replaced one of ancient and ramshackle 
ugliness. Moncrieffe had lighted a cigar, and 
was holding it blue-spiraled between two fingers 
while he laughed at some gentle drollery with 
which his friend had answered his accusations 
of having made a very discouraging and in- 
validish kind of repast. 

“Here’s Dunstan Thirl wall,” suddenly said 
Whitewright, as a kind of shabby dog-cart, 
drawn by a big, bony horse, entered the gateway 
just opposite. 

“Who’s Dunstan Thirlwall?” asked Mon- 
crieffe quickly, seeing that the small circular 
approach of their lawn drive left him slight time 
for explanatory asides. 

“He’s the biggest snob in Kiverview,” said 
Whitewright, with equal speed. “And I sup- 
pose, considering all the plutocrats who’ve clus- 
tered here, that to call him so is to mean vol- 
umes.” 

In another moment Mr. Dunstan Thirlwall, 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


13 


so to speak, was upon them. He pulled up his 
awkward horse with a short jerk that made the 
animal fling skyward his lantern- jawed head. 

“I want Dr. Moncrieffe, ’ ’ rang a voice, in 
bluff staccato. 4 ‘Where can I find him?” 


II. 

“I am he,” said Moncrieffe, advancing a little. 
“Can I be of any service?” 

“Yes, you can, doctor,” said the young man, 
not with incivility, yet with chill bluntness 
quite his own. “Our old physician, Dr. Bas- 
comb, is too ill to attend my mother — Mrs. Thirl- 
wall, you know.” 

“Ah, you are Mr. ThirlwaU, then?” 

The man in the dog-cart stared, and soon 
curtly nodded. “I thought you knew me.” 

“I haven’t had that pleasure — till now.” 

White wright moved away, muttering in quick, 
gleeful soliloquy: “Basil took him down a peg 
there /” 

“Oh, ah, yes,” replied Dunstan ThirlwaU, 
with cold rumination, fixing his gaze for a sec- 
ond on one upheld hand, as though to survey 
some rent in his dog-skin driving-glove. “My 
people have been such an eternity in these parts, 
you see—” 

“And I,” said Moncrieffe, “have been here 
but a few trifling yesterdays. Hence I must be 
pardoned for not knowing, as it were, the River- 
view immortals.” 


14 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


Thirl wall lifted his brows, as if the thought 
behind them were one of surprise that a bumble- 
lodged village doctor should make an attempt to 
be clever. Moncrieffe, warned by Whitewright’s 
late nimble and scorching comment, puffed coolly 
at his cigar till Mr. Thirlwall altered his super- 
cilious look. Through the azure mist of that cigar 
the two men’s eyes met. In a minute or so more 
of silence there seemed to flash between them the 
intelligence of a mutual forthcoming dislike. 

But Thirl wall’s voice was almost bland when 
he next spoke. “My mother isn’t at all well. 
She’s had one of her sudden attacks — they al- 
ways come when least expected. If youTl jump 
in here and let me drive you to our house — it’s 
about two miles away — I’ll see that you get 
back comfortably in this same trap. I’ve been 
delayed in finding you; I’m afraid the case is 
pretty urgent. Will you jump right in?” 

“Yes,” said Moncrieffe, after a very short 
pause. “Excuse me a moment, please.” He 
turned to look for his friend, and glimpsed him 
at the further end of the narrow hall. White- 
wright slipped into the little sitting-room as he 
saw him advance. Moncrieffe followed, and 
they met thus in sudden ambush. 

“I heard,” White' wright said, in semitone. 
“Of course you’ll go. The mother has heart- 
disease, and knows it, poor lady. YouTl be sure 
to like her; everybody does. Old Mr. Thirl- 
wall’s been dead several years. No one dreamed 
he wasn’t a millionaire till he died and left his 
family very little money, and acres on acres of 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


15 


rather unprofitable land. There are two chil- 
dren, this Dunstan fellow, and a hunchback 
sister (a sort of semi-mindless grown-up baby 
besides) whom they say that he loathes and is 
ashamed of. He’s a dismal example of how 
ungracefully we human beings can sometimes 
bear disappointments. He was put to school for 
several years in England, and grew up expecting 
thousands galore. His father’s losses in business 
have soured him to the bone — and when a nar- 
row egotist like that becomes soured it’s Heaven 
help his near relations. He hates Greendingle, 
as their place has been called since almost Revo- 
lutionary days. He spends a week at a time, 
very often, in town. Hobody knows just how 
he lives, belonging to fashionable clubs and cut- 
ting a dash in society as Mr. Dunstan Vander- 
vender Thirl wall. But the family are cramped, 
it’s said, by his cruel selfishness. He gets away, 
I’ve been told, with three-quarters of their 
meager income. But I mustn’t keep you. There’s 
this, though, to add. You’ll meet the loveliest 
girl at Greendingle you’ve ever yet laid eyes 
on.” 

“Ah, that’s an inducement to make me leave 
you here for an hour or so, reading by lamplight 
among the suicidal night-moths. And this di- 
vinity isn’t a Thirlwall?” 

“Ho — yes.” 

“Ho? Yes? How odd!” 

“Go, now, dear boy,” said White wright, with 
a soft propulsive push. f< I don’t want you to 
keep away from Mrs. Thirlwall a minute longer 


16 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


than you can help. She was always very good 
to my poor father, over there at the shop. Many 
a chat they’ve had together; dad swore by her.” 

“And the girl — the other' girl, Magnus, not 
the imbecile hunchback, but the — the Seek-no- 
Further. Do post me about her, please. ’ ’ 

“Never mind, just now; I can’t. There’s not 
time enough. It’s a sad history, but it’s also an 
inspiring one.” 

“You imply that it’s a very mysterious one,” 
said Moncrieffe, across his shoulder, as he went 
out to rejoin Dunstan Thirlwall. Then he 
paused, wheeled about, and caught White- 
wright by the wrist. “There — take care of 
yourself, old chap,” he said. This had grown 
a kind of habitual farewell formula with him, of 
late. His augmented fondness for his friend had 
given it the veiled yet vivid meaning of a “God 
bless you.” His vigilance had partaken both of 
affection and science. He realized that this man, 
whom he had grown tenderly to love, was shad- 
owed by a dark physical threat. It might be 
delayed for years, and it might wreak itself in 
the abruptest ruining way. 

“Tell me the lovely creature’s name, at least,” 
he demanded. “You say that she isn’t a Thirl- 
w r all, and yet that she is." 

“Oh, she’s a Thirlwall ,” assented White- 
wright. “She’s called so, I mean. She’s the 
adopted daughter of Dunstan’s mother.” 

“Ah— is that all?” 

“No — it isn’t all. It isn’t a hit all. Her 
name? Her name’s Eloise.” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


17 


“Eloise Thirl wall ?” 

“Yes; I suppose so.” 

“You suppose so? Don’t you know? Hasn’t 
she any name that you don’t ‘suppose’ about, 
one way or the other?” 

Whitewright gave his head an amiably exas- 
perated toss. Then, with great speed, he spoke 
more. “She’s been with Mrs. Thirl wall for 
years. There’s a story about her birth and adop- 
tion that’s no doubt a perfectly true one. Ogden 
Thirlwall, Dunstan’s father’s brother, was a 
man possibly much like himself — worldly, nar- 
row, unmoral. One day he died suddenly, and 
after his death the report of his false marriage 
and fathership of a young child, now orphaned, 
reached Mrs. Thirl wall’s ears. Perhaps there 
was no false marriage at all ; perhaps Eloise’s 
birth was still more pathetic than that. But 
Mrs. Thirlwall, against the wishes of her hus- 
band who was then living, sought and found the 
baby girl, and brought her home and has been 
devotedly maternal to her ever since. They say 
that when her sweet, kind eyes first lighted on 
little Eloise she was in some dreadful slummish 
hole, neglected so frightfully that the clothes 
were almost rotting off her tiny shape. ’ 

“Yes— I see. And this is the woman I am to 
go and try to aid this evening?” 

“Yes. And now do go and try to aid her, 
Basil! The delay—” 

“Pshaw; it hasn’t been more than the merest 
handful of seconds. You’ve talked like light- 
ning, and so have I. There, now— I will go. 


18 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


But tell me : how do they say that this Dunstan 
Thirl wall treats his left-handed cousin?” 

“Shockingly. I’ve heard that he detests her 
presence in the house. ’ ’ 

“The devil he does! How delightful for her! 
And she’s really so very sweet?” 

“Wait till you see her.” 

“I shan’t wait another minute,” said Mon- 
crieffe, laughing. “You’ve applied an effective 
spur. ’ ’ 

He mounted to a seat beside Dunstan Thirl- 
wall with a smile on his lips. They had got 
well out upon the main road before either of 
them spoke. 

“You’ve come here to stay, doctor?” 

“Yes. That is my intention — as long as there’s 
any necessity for a graveyard.” 

Dunstan laughed with such matter-of-course 
curtness at his grim little joke that he regretted 
having made it. “You’re living with that 
Yfhitewright fellow, I understand — the apothe- 
cary’s son.” 

“I’m living with Mr. Whitewright. ” 

“M — yes. I used to know old Whitewright. 
Eevrybody in Riverview did, of course. Queer 
old duffer. Had a head as bald as a billiard-ball 
for years, and cherished stern antipathy to a wig. 
Once, when I was a boy, I popped a pea at him 
from a shooter and hit him right on the crown 
of the cranium.” 

“Yes? What brutes we all are when boys, 
aren’t we?” 

Dunstan started a little, and then struck his 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


19 


lumbering horse a sharp whip-blow that made 
him break into a kind of solemn, reproachful 
canter. Moncrieffe stole a glance at the young 
man’s profile. Its upper lip was cut downward 
at the end in a weary and sneering way, though 
you felt that perhaps it could pulse upward quite 
smilingly at will, just as the hard, handsome, 
icy eye could at will wear a clement sparkle. 
The small russet mustache grew Huffily close 
to the cold-curved nose, and a dim network of 
wrinkles at the bone of the oval, untinted cheek 
spoke more of owls ’-feet from late hours than 
crows’-feet from sane dealings with unavoidable 
time. At the temple, shaded by the gay-rib- 
boned straw hat, was a segment of crisp, yellow- 
ish hair, cut short above a small, back-pressed 
ear. 

“Here’s a man who can please women if he 
tries,” Moncrieffe decided. “He’s good-looking, 
and he’s got it in him to pass for rarely amiable 
if he chooses, despite all the badness I’ve just 
heard about him.” 

“I suppose most boys are brutes,” Dunstan 
said, shortly and low- voiced. “I’m devilish 
sure I was one.” 

“That’s a candid confession, Mr. Thirlwall.” 

The burly horse shied at a gargoylish stump 
bulging from an embankment on the roadside. 
With his long-lashed whip Dunstan gave him a 
reprimanding sting on his lank neck. 

‘ ‘ Confound this brute ! He’s got neither sense 
nor speed nor pluck nor action nor — anything. 
He’s simply an old cow. Most boys could show 


20 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


better qualities than lie does, doctor. But about 
your friend — the son of the druggist. We used 
to understand, here at Riverview, that he was 
going in for a fine gentleman — a practicing phy- 
sician, and all that sort of thing. He didn’t, 
though, did he? He just settled down into the 
old paternal grooves. How was that?” 

“My friend, Magnus Whitewright, started 
with ambitions to be a doctor,” said Moncrieffe. 
“But illness has prevented him from pursuing 
such designs. He has pulmonary weakness, Mr. 
Thirlwall, and he very sensibly realizes that the 
career of a physician would overweight him.” 

“M— yes. I see.” 

“I don’t know whether, as you phrase it, he 
ever intended to go in for a fine gentleman. But 
education and study have made him a gentle - 
man, beyond doubt.” 

“Really?” 

Moncrieffe, for a little while, leaned back in 
the dog-cart and let that “Really” pierce him 
with its irritating poignance. Then he told him- 
self that he would be a sad fool to heed the flimsy 
arrogance of a person with a mental range as 
contracted as was broad and lovely the landscape 
through which he moved. 

A wet June had made its foliage richly ver 
dant. Robust trees massed their dark-green 
densities, now and then, against a sky where the 
midsummer sun was westering with splendid 
grace. He gave his blinding glare only at inter- 
vals, and then to blaze, for a moment, on some 
hollow where a stream sparkled amid caressing 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


21 


willows, on some breadth of rolling meadow 
where cows grazed languidly. In another second 
he was barred with purplish parallels of cloud, 
that softened his rays if they did not actually 
gloom them, and left dusky and mystic lights 
on a pearl- topped clump of elders, or wrung 
somber and sickly gleams from a lissome popu- 
lace of breezy reeds at the verge of some pool. 

4 4 1 hope we shall not find your mother very ill, ’ ’ 
said Moncrieffe, with a deliberate change of 
subject. 

44 No,” came the colorless answer, “I hope not. 
She was weak and drowsy when I left her, with 
no desire to speak. Utter prostration, you know. 
I was just on my way to Newport this morning, 
when the attack came on. I was going to stay 
there with some people. Of course I had to put 
it off, and telegraph, and all that sort of thing.’ ’ 

4 4 That was — inconvenient. ’ ’ 

4 4 It’s been distressing, naturally.” He almost 
growled out the next words, as if through set 
teeth, and with an air of more than half address- 
ing his own thoughts. 4 4 I’m getting used to 
these infernal disappointments, however. It 
looks as if I were to have them feed me, with a 
kind of pap-spoon, by destiny for the rest of my 
days.” Then, with the demeanor of having re- 
pented this condescension in the way of over- 
garrulity, he straightened himself and pointed 
swingingly with his whip-hand toward a clus- 
tered sweep of woodland pierced vaguely by a 
chimneyed roof. 

4 4 That’s Greendingle. I imagine you don’t 


22 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


know it yet. It’s horribly ugly as architecture, 
but fairly comfortable inside. The estate is 
really enormous. I don’t mind saying that it 
keeps us land-poor, with taxes and all that dev- 
iltry. Still, you may have heard of the new 
railroad that’s being . planned hereabouts. If 
they carry it out it will run straight through our 
property for several miles. ” He made another 
oscillant gesture. “From yonder, I mean, 
where you see that old wind-mill, right along to 
here, and past here for a good stretch. It will 
mean a big pot of money to us, for the new com- 
pany can’t close their contracts till our demands 
have been settled.” 

As Dunstan ended, the wagon swept round a 
bend of road that commanded, beyond brief 
meadowy interspaces, a white-sprinkled expanse, 
which to look upon was to recognize its pathetic 
meaning. 

Half in humorous vein, Moncrieffe said: 

“The new railroad can’t very well go there.” 

“It wants to,” returned Dunstan Thirlwall, in 
sturdy monotone. “At least through a part.” 

‘ ‘ What ! Of the Ri verview graveyard ? ’ ’ 

“A part — yes.” 

“How horrible!” 

Dunstan set his head sideways and shrugged 
his shoulders. “ We don’t think so. At least, I 
don’t. Hone of us are buried in the particular 
part gloated over. It’s chiefly occupied, I be- 
lieve, by the remains of Riverviewians who 
haven’t any living descendants. Just before my 
father died there was a huge outcry of senti- 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


23 


mentalists. He yielded to it, and for this very 
reason, perhaps, the whole railroad project now 
hangs fire.” 

“I should think it might!” Moncrieffe flung 
out, emotionally. 

He wondered, at the same instant, if Magnus 
Whitewright’s father were buried in the threat- 
ened part of this old-time cemetery, and felt a 
new surge of dislike for his associate creep 
through every fiber of his frame. 


Ill, 

Dunstan Thirl wall had not underestimated 
the charms of his family abode. It was ungainly, 

| with mammoth wooden pillars, white and fluted, 
towering to the little shingled slice of overlap- 
s' ping roof which they rather ridiculously sup- 
I ported. But inside it was full of graceful proofs 
that its habitants knew how to live with blended 
taste and ease. Its neglected lawns and some- 
what weedy paths were less pleasing than its 
wide hall, made almost room-like with great 
cushioned lounges and woolly rugs, whence 
Dunstan and Moncrieffe passed into a sitting- 
room winsome both for elegance and comfort. 

“Be seated, please,” Dunstan said, “and I’ll 
see — ” 

But he ended there, for a young woman now 
glided swiftly into the large, pleasant chamber. 


2 4 A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 

“Dunstan,” she said, with anxiety in her 
voice, “you’ve brought the doctor?” 

“Yes.” 

Without waiting for an introduction the new- 
comer went straight to Moncrieffe and put out 
her hand. “Doctor,” she said, “I’m very glad 
you’ve arrived. My aunt is a trifle better, and 
we think the attack is passing off. But it has 
left her very weak. Will you come up to her 
room, please?” 

Moncrieffe at once followed the speaker up- 
stairs. Dunstan seemed to have resolved him- 
self into a natural nullity, now, before this new 
feminine presence, at once so emphatic and so 
captivating. Her sunshine had dissipated him, 
and though a kind of pensive sunshine, it was 
yet curiously potent. She was, of course, Eloise 
Thirlwall, and thoughts of her strangely sad 
place in the world thrilled him now that he 
had seen her. The halls and the staircase by 
which he accompanied her to the apartment of 
her aunt, gave him but fitful glimpses of a 
face he had already seen full and clear, with 
a surprised, comprehensive enjoyment in the 
vision. 

It was a face so girlish that you wondered it 
could also be so womanly. It had a sweet keen- 
ness of coloring, but beyond that no definable 
“points” of beauty. It was, in a way, generous 
of structure, like the maidenly amplitude of the 
tallish figure. But its expression alone justified 
its attractiveness. You could best have said of 
the eyes that they were sincere and courageous ; 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


25 


of the brow that it was broad and capable ; of 
the mouth that it could be both tender and firm. 
Moncrieffe, while at times moving a few paces 
behind her, was sensible of an added pictorial 
pleasure in the thick strands of chestnut hair, 
rolled up from the milky nape of her neck, just 
neatly enough to escape the charge of negligence, 
and somehow in bounteous accord with her rich 
if immature moldings. 

At a certain closed door on the second hall she 
paused, and said softly, with her hand on the 
knob : 

‘‘Now will you come right in, please? Aunt 
is much stronger, and quite conscious.” 

Then she opened the door of a large bedroom, 
prettily appointed, with green sweeps of after- 
noon landscape showing at its wide-open win- 
dows. Mrs. Thirlwall, a rather stout lady with 
sunny violet eyes and benignance on every fea- 
ture of a face that might once have been beauti- 
ful, spoke from the bed before Eloise and her 
companion had more than half crossed the spa- 
cious chamber. 

“I’m not half ill enough to see a doctor. By 
to-morrow I shall probably be up and about. It’s 
the most amazing thing, the way I sink right 
down, and then rally again.” She stretched 
out a hand to Moncrieffe, which he not only 
took, but retained, with professional gentleness. 
“So you’re Dr. Moncrieffe?” she went on, with 
a smile that struck him as exquisitely genial. It 
was a smile that disclosed her teeth, remarkably 
pure and flawless for a woman of her evident 


26 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


years. “Pm very glad to see you, doctor, 
though a little while ago I’m afraid you’d have 
found me neither glad nor sorry. They say 
that I just dropped off in a dead faint and stayed 
so a perfect age. Eloise, bring the doctor a 
chair; that’s right, my dear.” Moncrieffe had 
seated himself at the bedside when Mrs. Thirl- 
wall again spoke, this time addressing an elderly 
maid-servant who stood in respectful quiescence 
beside her pillow. “And Margaret, you can take 
Miss Anita downstairs now, and try to amuse 
her with a little stroll about the grounds. ’ ’ 

“Ho, no, no,” whimpered a voice from one 
of the windows. Moncrieffe turned and saw a 
childish though writhen shape, with the face of 
a grown-up girl crowded in between frail, high- 
bulging shoulders. “I want to stay here with 
you, mamma,” the voice went on, in that piping 
falsetto treble that so often leaves the lips of the 
deformed. “I want to! I want to!” And 
then a kind of impish screech ensued, as Mar- 
garet advanced toward the window. 

“Never mind,” said another voice, authori- 
tative yet kindly. “You needn’t go with Mar- 
garet. You shall go with me.” 

A claw-like hand clutched Eloise’ s, and a gig- 
gle answered her, vacuous but placated. It was 
evident that to “go” anywhere with her cousin 
meant for the half-witted little creature all de- 
sirable content. Presently Moncrieffe was alone 
beside his patient, even the servant having de- 
parted ; and looking at him with soft fixity, Mrs. 
Thirl wall said : 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


27 


“That dear niece of mine has managed to leave 
us together for a short time, doctor. It was just 
like her careful tact. She knew that I could 
speak with more point and freedom if we were 
quite without listeners. I am not in the least 
doubt concerning the character of my ailment. 
It’s a valvular weakness, with a tendency to 
heart-failure. I had a long talk with the famous 
authority on cardiac troubles, Dr. Wingate, more 
than five years ago. He then told me that my 
case was wholly incurable.” 

Moncrieffe’s fingers were on her pulse. “I 
have known Dr. Wingate to make mistakes, 
Mrs. Thirl wall. I shall ask you a few questions, 
now. Pray answer each of them with delibera- 
tion, for my power to help you in any material 
way will depend on the perfect accuracy of your 
statements.” 

His repose, frankness, and unobtrusive self- 
reliance made a look of interest and surprise light 
the face of his listener. 

“I’ll answer with the best conscience I can 
muster,” she said; and a certain rare cordiality 
and good cheer beamed from her features, which 
were somewhat pallid and fatigued, yet without 
a trace of the invalid’s emaciation or languor. 
“As you see, doctor, I am almost well and strong 
again, now. This is so often the way with 
heart-disease. One may have a foot in the grave 
and yet seem as if both feet were so securely on 
the upper surface of terra firma /” 

Moncrieffe slowly bowed his head. “ Yes ; that 
is true. I’m not old in my profession, Mrs. Thirl- 


28 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


wall, but I believe that in cases of heart-trouble 
much may be done that as yet has been done ill 
or not at all. ’ ’ 

“Really?” She touched his hand caressingly 
with her fingers while he still held her wrist. 
The slight action was both motherly and fond. 
Moncrieffe’s ambition underwent a thrill, and it 
has been said that he was ambitious. He felt 
that here was a chance of gaining some sort of 
initial distinction, while at the same time test- 
ing practically the results of some very hard and 
patient study. Simultaneously, too, he recalled 
Whitewright’s words, “You’ll be sure to like 
her ; everybody does. ’ ’ He had got greatly to 
like her, indeed, here within a few fleet min- 
utes; and now it was pleasantly plain to him 
that he was liked in return. And such a result 
already translated its lure to him in terms more 
subtle than those of flattering self-love ; for was 
not this the woman who had acted with such 
human bravery toward the ill-fated girl— some- 
how as unusual of aspect as her supple and 
rhythmic name — whom he had looked on only to 
admire? 

“I have gone into this malady a great deal,” 
he continued, “and have found that both the 
French and Germans excel us in our grasp and 
search of it. And of course, in the hospitals, 
we’ve every means of observing its various de- 
velopments. . . How, then, for the questions, 
Mrs. Thirl wall,” he ended, with a smile. 

She gave him just the thoughtful and detailed 
responses that he desired. And when his cour- 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


29 


teous yet shrewd little cross-examination was 
over he made certain physical tests, which he 
told her that he should hope soon to repeat more 
satisfactorily, with the aid of instruments. 

4 ‘ And assure yourself, ’ ’ she said, in a quaint 
mood of sad gayety, 4 ‘that I am a doomed 
woman. ’ 9 

“Perhaps far from that. In a case like yours 
we are none of us knowably doomed. But I was 
thinking of something else — of how much, in 
fact, might be done by science to keep these ugly 
seizures at bay. For though she has still a very 
great deal to learn, every year she manages to 
learn a little more.” 

“Ah, that is true! And one day she will be- 
gin to solve the mightier mysteries.” 

“Do you believe that, Mrs. Thirlwall?” he 
asked astonishedly. 

“Yes.” Lying there before him, she closed 
her eyes, and as often happens in sleep, new 
traits of expression crept into her pale, fatigued, 
yet not seemingly unhealthful face. Mingled 
with her look of charity was one of trouble and 
suffering that he had failed before to mark. As 
she reopened her eyes a lingering sigh fluttered 
from her lips. “Oh, yes; I believe now that 
knowledge is everything. Once I did not. The 
struggle was terrible with me. I suppose mine 
is what they call the religious temperament. 
Faith had meant so much to me ! I seemed to 
feel it die in agony, like a limb that had been 
crushed and must be lopped off. Do you know, 
too, I trembled for what the change might effect 


30 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


in my moral life? All the help that I gave to 
my fellow-creatures (not that it was much, but 
it was something) had seemed to flow straight 
from that faith. The surrender of a palpable, 
tangible Revelation cost me a fearful ordeal. 
Mere reason seemed so cold and aidless after that 
loving divinity, that providential succor, in 
which I had trusted implicitly for years ! And 
the sense of my own constant bodily menace 
grew so much harder to bear ! Is it not Huxley 
who says that the slaying of a beautiful hy- 
pothesis by an ugly fact is one of the great trag- 
edies of science? My awakening into rational- 
ism partook of just that tragic element. I’ve 
had my bereavements, my trials, as every man 
or woman of my age has had them. But religion 
had softened them so! To find its consolation 
crumble into ashes, and to face the sternness of 
a new creed (dignified and honorable, if one 
pleases, but perfectly comfortless) dizzied and 
dismayed me.” Here the speaker broke off, with 
a faint laugh of sudden embarrassment. “But 
what will you think of me for making this con- 
fession? It is my way to be expansive with 
people at a moment’s notice — with people, I mean, 
who please me as you have done.” She now 
caught Moncrieffe’s hand and shook it in her 
own soft and largish one, with an abrupt cor- 
diality. “I can tell you this, with propriety, 
doctor, can’t I?” she went on. “It would be 
different if I were not a talkative old woman, 
prattling to somebody young enough to be her 
son.” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


31 


As those two words, “her son,” were spoken, 
Moncrieffe either saw or fancied that he saw a 
kind of shadow touch her face. 

She had forcibly stimulated and attracted him. 
He returned the pressure of her hand with possh 
bly more warmth than he was aware of. 

‘ ‘ My dear Mrs. Thirlwall, ’ ’ he said. ‘ 4 1 can feel 
for you and with you more deeply than at first 
thought you might guess. What you say only 
reconvinces me of the truth that religion was 
made for sorrow.” 

“Yes! Happiness does not need it,” she 
murmured. “It is a star, a pilot star, and dark- 
ness first gave it birth.” 

“And in that pilotage you have now no 
trust?” 

“None! But I once had, as I have told you, 
and the trust was inestimably sweet!” She 
paused, and a fresh ardor, if it were not too 
melancholy to be named so, filled her gaze. “I 
sometimes think myself the strangest product — 
a sort of end-of-the-century anomaly. I have 
actually found myself praying that I might once 
again pray!” 

“You mean — ?” 

“Oh, with the old lovely, self-surrendering 
impulse! Consistent infidels would have none 
of me, I am sure, and the authentic Christians 
would hold me in meek discountenance.” 

“Authentic Christians?” repeated Moncrieffe, 
with a bitter inflection. “How few of them are 
ever met!” 

“I know one — my niece, Eloise.” 


32 A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 

He gave a slight start. “You’re not sympa- 
thetic, then?” 

“Perfectly. I revere her belief. It almost 
makes a new religion for myself. I watch it as 
if it were some structure with spires and turrets 
too ethereal for the rough storms it must con- 
front. And yet it is marvelously firm. That 
comforts me — I mean for the dear girl’s own 
sake, in the years when I am gone. But all this 
time I have perhaps been dealing rude shocks to 
your orthodoxy.” 

“Mine?” He spoke almost absently. He was 
thinking of Eloise Thirlwall in this new and 
gracious light with which a few enthusiastic 
words had caressingly clothed her. “ Mine ? ” he 
again repeated. “Ah, my dear lady, I’m afraid 
I’ve neither orthodoxy nor heresy. I’ve fallen — ’ ’ 
He stopped dead short, and seemed to question 
his own mind for a second. “I’ve fallen,” he 
soon resumed, “into what I fear you would term 
an apathetic mental habit. Yet it is not apa- 
thetic ; it is only dispassionately reflective. Per- 
haps I too am an end-of-the-century anomaly.” 

“You are — indifferent, then?” 

“I suppose I am critical,” his grave voice loit- 
ered. “Or why not call it impersonal? There 
is a line somewhere in Tennyscn, 

“ ‘Holding no creed, yet contemplating all.’ 

Possibly that just expresses me. I — ” 

But here his face clouded solicitously, and he 
rested a hand on the arm of his patient. 

“ Would it not be best,” he said, “for you to 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


33 


let yourself drop away, easily and peacefully, into 
a long, refreshing sleep?” 

“Oh, doctor, yes , if I only could!” 

“We will manage that if we can, and I think 
we can.” He was a young physician, but he 
spoke with the soothing and responsible air that 
belongs to a born one. At this point he rose, 
and just then, most opportunely, Eloise reap- 
peared. Moncrieffe addressed her in a low voice, 
saying that he would like to send a prescription 
at once to the village, and have it made up there 
with all possible speed. 

One side of her underlip slanted itself beneath 
the upper, and an anxious tensity touched the 
verges of her nostrils. 

“You think, then, it is so urgent a matter?” 
she faltered. 

“Not now — no. It was, before I got here; 
but the urgency has passed. ’ ’ He loudened his 
tones, continuing : “I hope your aunt will let us 
darken the room. Every minute of sleep that 
she gets between now and morning will work 
for her precious benefit.” He readvanced toward 
the bed. “Even if you don’t sleep till my pre- 
scription comes back from the village, Mrs. 
Thirl wall— ” 

“I’ll try to, all the same,” she broke in, with 
a drolly complaisant merriment. “But only on 
one condition — that you go downstairs and have 
a nice talk with my niece from now till the pre- 
scription reaches us. Don’t look confused. 
Eloise. I want you and Dr. Moncrieffe to know 
one another. I’m sure you’ll get on famously. 


34 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


I’ve lost my poor old troublesome heart to him 
already; haven’t I, doctor?” 

“I do wish you had, Mrs. Thirlwall,” said 
Moncrieffe, in jocular semitone. “I’d try to give 
you back a brand-new one. As it is, I’m going 
to try and do some professional repairing with 
it, if you’ll only let me.” 

“Hear him, Eloise,” came buoyantly from the 
bed. “Isn’t he charming? You can’t guess 
how strong and wise he can be, as well. He’s 
been saying things to me that I shall dream 
about, gratefully and hopefully, if I do fall 
asleep before the prescription comes. He’s right 
in the front van of modern workers ; he’s full of 
the scientific spirit, and you know how that sort 
of thing takes hold of me. I’m so enamored of 
him that I’m going to be generous and give him 
to you for a jealous interval, provided he prom- 
ises to administer his own dose in person as soon 
as it’s procured.” 

When Moncrieffe’s medical message had been 
written and consigned to a servant, he and Eloise 
left the still, book-crowded library in which he 
had found pen, ink and paper, and went down- 
stairs together. Twilight had now begun to 
weave its dusky spells on the lawn. They seated 
themselves in two big wicker-work chairs on 
the long, narrow piazza. 

“It’s very cheering,” said Eloise, “to learn 
that you are in hopes my aunt will soon quite 
recover.” 

“ Quite recover, Miss Thirlwall? I wish I 
could have prophesied so brightly as that!” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


35 


“Yes — I understand. Her disease is beyond 
real cure, but you may possibly arrest it and 
keep her alive even for years to come?” She 
looked at him with beseeching inquiry as she 
paused. 

“That is what I should say there was decided 
probability of my doing,” he answered. “But, 
frankly,” he added, “I am surprised at your 
aunt’s sudden confidence in me. She knows 
nothing about me, as I take it, except that I 
have come here to Riverview as a young physi- 
cian, without support of the least social kind.” 

Eloise looked at him astonishedly. “But Aunt 
Emily did know about you, of course.” 

“Oh, really,” said Moncrieffe, with a relieved 
accent. 

“You’ve been here for some time, have you 
not?” 

“I’ve had my shingle up, as the lawyers say, 
since early spring. ’ ’ 

“Yes. Well, Riverview, you know, is a small 
place.” 

“It’s a wondrously thrifty one.” 

“Thrifty isn’t just the word.” 

“Well, then, luxurious — plutocratic.” 

“There you describe it better. . . As I said, 
Aunt Emily had heard of you, because you’ve 
been going among the poorer classes here, and 
she goes among them, too.” 

“And do you accompany her, may I ask?” 

“Sometimes; rather often, in fact. But there 
are not many of them. The prosperous predomi- 
nate.” 


36 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“Sol thought, Miss Thirl wall.” Moncrieffe 
leaned forward a little. “I suppose you’re well 
aware how deeply your aunt is attached to you?” 

He slipped back' into his chair, biting his lips 
and feeling that to this acquaintance of less than 
an hour his personal note had meant almost an 
insolence. But she gave him quick courage by 
her unhardening demeanor. She appeared to 
have a part in the sweet naturalness of the 
glooming grasses and the ebon articulations of 
the lace-like tree-boughs against golden sunset 
air, as she replied, with .her face all simple fer- 
vor and her hands at quiet contact in her lap. 

“I think I know the full depth of that dear 
soul’s love for me! I ought to know it!” And 
then he saw that she was mastering certain 
quivers about her mouth, which her next words 
betrayed, as it were, despite the swift control she 
had used. 

“I — I hate to even fancy her gone. It’s a 
kind of passionate selfishness with me. I — I 
don’t know what I should do if I lost her ! I 
should be so strangely and hopelessly alone!” 

In another instant she had risen, and was 
close beside the arm of Moncrieffe’ s chair. 
“Aunt likes you, believes in you! I read her 
so well ! And her intuitions are rarely in error. 
Oh, if you could only keep her alive for a few 
more years ! That is what she wants because 
she knows how intensely I want it. I — I don’t 
mean, Dr. Moncrieffe, that she wouldn’t want 
it anyway ; she clings to life as all strong and 
large natures do and must. But there’s that 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


37 


other incentive — a splendidly generous one. 
Some time, when I know you better — if I ever 
do know you better — I might say more. I tried, 
once, to say something of the sort to old Dr. 
Bascomb, after she had had an attack like this. 
But he repelled me by a kind of genial obtuse- 
ness. He comprehended my feelings, my posi- 
tion’ ’ (she shot her head to right and left, here, 
as if in sudden dread of listeners), “more than 
you can do, as a matter of course. But he some- 
how failed to give me a word of real sympathy. 
I — I said to him with what was perhaps a hor- 
rible sort of candor : ‘ It’s agonizing to have her 
die at all , but to have her die now is like the 
earth sinking beneath my feet.’ I must have 
been hysterical. I’ve gained self-control since 
then. I mean never to let myself go like that 
again. But, still — ” • 

Here she suddenly paused. Moncrieffe got up 
from his chair, and took one of her hands, which 
she instantly withdrew, receding from him at 
the same moment. 

“But, still ,” she went on, with vocal breaks 
and tremors, “I’ve always wanted to beg some 
physician to do his best with her— to keep her 
from dying and leaving me — to use that very 
science which she so firmly trusts, and use it 
with all his finest force and skill!” 

She swept her handkerchief across both eyes, 
but not so soon that her watcher failed to see the 
tears which had started and sparkled there. 

“It’s so absurd of me, and it’s so childish, 
too,” she continued, in a much calmer voice. 


38 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“But some time when you come again, as you 
surely will often come, I’ll explain whatever 
seems curious in my acts or words. ’ ’ 

Just then a voice sounded from the doorway, 
whence Dunstan came sauntering. “Oh, you’re 
here,” he said, with languid ambiguity. Then, 
directly to Moncrieffe: “Are you leaving so 
soon, doctor?” 

“No; not yet. Not till after my prescription 
comes. I wish to watch its effect.” 

He spoke civilly enough, but a perfect chill 
of inward repugnance had taken hold of him. 
When, a minute later, Dunstan drew forth a 
silver cigarette-case, opened it, and extended it 
toward him, saying coolly, “Will you smoke?” 
he bowed polite refusal. But he had an im- 
pulse, at the same time, to snatch the shining 
ltitle bauble from his host’s hand and fling it 
into the young man’s demure and decorous face. 


IV. 

For Magnus Whitewright’s words, vividly 
recalled during the drive to G-reendingle, were 
now still more reassertive in his thought. ITe 
had possessed himself, so to speak, of the key 
to Eloise’s odd behavior, and hence both pity 
and indignation replaced what surprise it might 
otherwise have wrought in him. 

Here, on the old-fashioned portico of this re- 
tired and semi-colonial estate, with its emerald 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


39 


acres dimpling just beyond him in suave mid- 
summer twilight, he was pierced by a sense of 
the tragedy which circumstance had summoned 
him to face. A glance at Dunstan made it plain 
enough that with insolent antagonism he could 
turn into torture the days of his ill-starred cousin. 
A glance at Eloise showed with what suffering 
yet heroic patience she probably bore his cynic 
taunts. 

“It may be a melodramatic view to take of 
this gelid and smooth young aristocrat,’ ’ ran 
Moncrieffe’s rapid deductions; “but I can al- 
most fancy him glad to the inmost center of 
his worldly soul if he were left motherless, 
cousinless and sisterless by some agency like 
a convenient lightning-bolt or a sudden infec- 
tious disease. That noble and large-souled wo- 
man upstairs is very possibly a bore to him, 
with her sympathies and humanities and cor- 
dialities that he comprehends about as clearly 
as a miser would comprehend a philanthropist. 
His poor little sister, with her deformed shape 
and fragmentary mind, is no doubt a bore as 
well, instead of touching him into tenderness 
through the grotesque and uncouth pathos of 
her affliction. And this Eloise, this broad- 
browed girl, with her look of mingled strength 
and truth, with her quick-convincing air of 
being a power for good, and with her strangely 
piteous inheritance of shame, she, too, bores 
him — she, too, is a continual thorn in his dainty 
flesh. Ah, how easy to read her anguish of 
dread at the thought of her aunt’s death! Mrs. 


40 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


Thirl wall, devotedly loved, would, iu dying, 
leave this girl a far bitterer doom than merely 
to mourn her loss. She would leave her a sor- 
row shot through with helpless terror.” 

Dunstan lit a cigarette, though the breeze that 
came rustling hardily from knoll and slope made 
him round both hands about his flickering taper, 
and crook both knees in watchful tendance of 
its flame. Throwing away the burned remnant, 
he readdressed Moncrieffe through a smoke-cloud : 

“So you think your patient well enough to 
leave her, doctor? That’s encouraging, isn’t 
it?” 

“Very,” said Moncrieffe. They all stood to- 
gether in a sort of angular trio, now. Eloise had 
drawn a little into the background. “I’ve had 
the room darkened ; your mother has kindly con- 
sented to this arrangement until the prescription 
reaches us. I’m glad of it, because I prefer 
greatly that she should gain whatever natural 
sleep may come to her.” 

“I’m afraid she will not sleep a wink,” said 
Eloise, looking at Moncrieffe and not at her 
cousin. 

“She seemed drowsy and tired when I last 
saw her,” said Dunstan, also looking at Mon- 
crieffe. “I told you that, doctor, if you recol- 
lect, while we drove over.” He now glanced 
across his shoulder at Eloise with a fleeting 
stare. “Miss Thirl wall, here, is fond of the 
dark sides of things. I imagine she’s perfectly 
convinced, at present, that my mother will toss 
on her pillow till morning.” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


41 


Eloise’s eyes moved with determined softness 
toward those of her cousin. The survey cost 
her a secret effort, betrayed by a vague, strained 
expression in the lines of throat and chin. 

“Please don’t make Dr. Moncrieffe think me 
so gloomy of spirit, Dunstan,” she said. 

“Bless me,” came his answer, while he puffed 
at his cigarette, “are you already so anxious for 
his good opinion?” 

The levity of this reply had only what one 
would call the society tone ; but Moncrieffe was 
quick to follow it up by saying: 

“I’m already very anxious for Miss Thirl- 
wall’s good opinion.” 

“Really?” shrugged Dunstan. “How prom- 
ising a case, doctor, of mutual approbation!” 
He swept Moncrieffe’s face with a frigidly quiz- 
zical glance. “Be careful. Riverview is a hot- 
bed of gossip, though it seems to be so harm- 
lessly respectable.” 

“I think it, so far, very respectable,” said 
Moncrieffe, with a random air of deflecting the 
conversational current. 

“It’s amusingly so,” struck in Eloise, as 
though to abet his disclosed project. “I often 
wonder if there is any other Hew York suburb 
as glitferingly prosperous.” 

“Hoboken Heights, perhaps, or Long Island 
City,” suggested Dunstan, with a satire more 
weary than jocose. 

“How he flings his petty rebuffs at her!” 
thought Moncrieffe. Just then Eloise’s laugh 
sprang silvery on the silence. It cut the young 


42 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


doctor; it had too propitiating a ring; he would 
have preferred that Eloise should not humor her 
cousin’s paltry joke. 

“Really,” he said, turning to her, “River- 
view is a colony of palaces. While I drive 
about it I wonder if in time somebody will not 
make a petition at Albany to have it rechris- 
tened Millionairsville.” 

Dunstan laughed at this, but restrictedly, as 
though it were the rough material of a good 
thing which somebody else might say better. 
His manner pricked Moncrieffe anew, but he 
spoke with lazy unconsciousness of any such 
puncture. 

“Riverview is to my mind an elegant, opu- 
lent, ceremonious hole. A lot of rich people, 
for the most part rather refined, have gathered 
together here in a lot of handsome houses, for 
no conceivable purpose but to show each other 
the darkest and direst meanings of social stu- 
pidity. They’re just a large enough body, all 
told, to be abominably provincial, and they’re 
just a small enough one to think themselves the 
reverse. In the winter they put on the airs of 
a Newport during August, and in the summer 
they behave as if they were a New York during 
January. You’re asked to a decent dinner- 
party here and you’re expected to talk of it as 
if it had been a Patriarchs’ Ball. And every 
course you’ve eaten, and the exact number of 
the footmen in waiting, and the precise toilet 
of every woman present, is a matter of nine 
days’ cackle. On the tenth day somebody gives 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


43 


another dinner-party, and then, in a similar 
vein, the cackle recommences. And then, if 
there happens to be another affair of the same 
sort nine days later, the extremely fashionable 
gayety of River view is a new cause for cackling 
afresh.’ ’ 

Dunstan had finished his cigarette, and now 
walked to the edge of the piazza and threw the 
little smoking stump out on the graveled drive, 
with a sort of cultured savagery in his gesture. 

The next minute something made him turn 
sharply. It was his sister, Anita, who came 
hurrying from the inner hall, with her woman’s 
face, her childishly peevish expression, and her 
forlorn deformity. She wavered toward Eloise 
with piteous, crippled pace, and clutched the 
girl’s gown in triumphant capture. 

“I’ve got you again,” she cried. “They won’t 
let me go to mamma’s room, and I wasn’t going 
to stay off there in the garden. I hate the garden ; 
I’m sick and tired of it. Why can’t I be with 
you if mamma wants to go to sleep? And why 
does she want to go to sleep so early? Margaret 
says the room’s dark and she’s all alone. Let 
us go and stay there, anyhow, Cousin Eloise. 
We can keep ever so still, and perhaps I’ll go 
to sleep, too, if it’s real dark, and you’ll tell me 
a story and let me lay my head on your lap.” 

Eloise stooped caressingly, and began whis- 
pering certain words, inaudible to both her 
observers. 

“Anita,” said Dunstan, with abrupt and 
low- voiced command, “you can’t go into your 


44 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


mother’s room, and you can’t stay here, [fretting 
and fuming.” 

His sister scowled at him, and spitefully 
showed her tongue. Then she suddenly burst 
into a raucous cry and hid her face in Eloise’s 
draperies, tugging at them with both tiny hands. 

Eloise stroked the silky auburn hair of her 
little cousin’s bowed head, almost the only en- 
dowment of an unabnormal kind that nature 
had given her, and this in a manner mock- 
ingly beautiful. 

“Dunstan,” she pleaded, “let the child stay 
with me here.” (Everybody at Greendingle 
always spoke of Anita as a “child,” though she 
would be twenty her next birthday.) “Aunt 
Emily’s illness has made her nervous, but I’m 
sure that in a few minutes — if she only keeps at 
my side like this — she will be quite quiet and 
not cause the least trouble.” 

“Ho,” opposed Dunstan. “It’s not the place 
for her here. Mother’s illness has got about, 
by this time, I’m nearly certain; and if any 
people should come driving up to the house it 
would look — ” He paused, and floated an un- 
easy glance toward Moncrieffe, swiftly with- 
drawing it, perhaps because of the hard visual 
response it met. He seemed willing to leave 
his sentence unfinished, less from embarrass- 
ment than defiance. With a short toss of the 
head, however, he began another, which proved 
almost as short. “There’s no kindness to 
Anita in coddling her whims and freaks before 
strangers.” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


45 


Scarcely had he thus spoken than his sister, 
glaring at him across one distorted shoulder, 
burst into that paroxysmal kind of grief which 
very young children show. She held her breath, 
with back-flung head, after a brief shriek. 
Eloise, with a twitch of pain at the lips, 
leaned down and caught her from the floor in 
both arms. Her weight was hardly more than a 
child’s, and if it were taxing, Anita’s young kins- 
woman gave no sign of this. She hurried into the 
house with her burden, but not too soon for a most 
lusty roar to crash upon the evening stillness. 

Dunstan broke into a low, disgusted laugh. 
When he looked at Moncrieffe he saw that the 
latter, with' back turned full upon him and head 
slightly aslant, seemed watching a black, vola- 
tile cloud of birds that dropped above the smoky 
gold of the horizon in all the loitering grace of 
a spent sky-rocket’s earthward sparks. 

“A most unmanageable little vixen, that sis- 
ter of mine,” Dunstan broke silence. “Of course 
we’re hugely sorry for her, but giving the poor 
little thing her head whenever she wants it 
would be the wildest folly.” 

Moncrieffe, having slowly confronted his host, 
replied with the vaguest of non-committal nods. 
Eloise’s entreating eyes yet haunted him, and 
her assurance, too, that the “child” would keep 
decorous if allowed to remain here in her com- 
pany. Plainly this humane brother thought 
Anita’s mere presence a nuisance, and made 
a point of having her hustled out of his sight at 
the faintest excuse for such evanishment. 


46 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“There!” exclaimed Dunstan, in another mo- 
ment, peering toward a distant gate. “It’s just 
as I said. Somebody’s driving in. It’s the 
Blagdons’ carriage.” There seemed in his voice 
a riDg of contempt queerly blended with one of 
respect. “You know about the Blagdons, of 
course.” 

“I’ve seen their very handsome house and 
grounds.” 

“You’ll not find the lord of the manor quite 
so handsome, I’m afraid, though he’s certainly 
picturesque.” 

“There’s a daughter, is there not?” asked 
Moncrieffe. 

“Oh, yes,” replied Dunstan, with one of his 
thin, scrappy laughs. “There’s decidedly a 
daughter; there’s very much of a daughter 
indeed. ...” 

Meanwhile Eloise had got her clamorous 
cousin off into a corner of the library, and was 
fondling and humoring her with hopes of 
quiescence. She had long ago admitted that 
she “spoiled” Anita, but then to look on that 
cramped body and to think of that thwarted 
brain was often to feel against nature’s own 
spoliation a thrill indignant as it was idle. 
There were times when the hunchback’s double 
affliction, both physical and mental, was like a 
voice crying out in its very silence against the 
injustice of so harsh a curse. But to-day her 
ruminations took a different turn ; an egotistic 
tint pervaded them. Anita’s outburst had par- 
taken of real hysteria, this time, for she felt to- 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


47 


ward her brother that species of repulsion which 
we see in a spiteful animal toward certain human 
beings who have maltreated it: she mingled an- 
tipathy with fear. Horribly afraid of him, she 
ventured only to express her abhorrence in ma- 
licious grimaces and snarls. They were the 
malign part of her, like a dumb, sleepy con- 
sciousness of her untoward lot. Ordinarily 
they did not rise to the surface; nothing very 
often rose to the surface with her, except an 
infantile petulance or a passionate animal-like 
affection ; and this latter took one of two forms, 
tenacious fondness either for Eloise or her 
mother. But years of association with Dun- 
stan had made her ready to show him sput- 
tering and futile revolt at an instant’s notice. 
It was like the hiss and glare of an angered kit- 
ten, but to Eloise and her aunt it was fraught 
with grievous regret. 

All this was an old story for the girl now; 
and as Anita sobbed herself to sleep, with frail 
arms clasped about her neck, Eloise fell to think- 
ing of her own fate. She was not bitter by 
temperament; courage and good cheer were her 
native atmosphere. But now her aunt’s alarm- 
ing attack had told discordantly on her nerves. 
She realized a certain willfulness in her own 
optimism. Caught by the feeble yet fervent 
clasp of her deformed little cousin, she told 
herself that they two, seated here like this, 
were akin in destiny as in blood. 

“And yet I’d change places with her now, 
this very evening,” she miserably mused. “Her 


48 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


misfortune — is it not almost trivial beside mine? 
She cannot realize the blow that has been dealt 
her; every pang that my hurt brings me seems 
to quiver with a new quality of pain. Yester- 
day it was wrought by some slur of Dunstan’s; 
this morning by a shade of patronage in the bow 
from her carriage of that self-contained Mrs. 
Cassilis; later, by the sudden illness of dear 
Aunt Emily ; and later still, by the conception 
that this new jmung doctor, with his look of 
strength and honesty, might soon hear from 
others what something was all the while mak- 
ing me long to tell him myself! ” 

She stooped and looked at the narrow, wizened 
face just below her breast, with its closed eye- 
lids and a tear gleaming on one of its pallid 
little convex cheeks. “Ah, yes, Nita, poor 
Nita,” her passionate thoughts ran on, “I’d 
rather be you than be myself ! For they only 
pity you, and your dim mind doesn’t even care 
for that. But I have to bear their contempt — 
their illogical, brutal, semi-conscious contempt! 
As if I did not know” (and here her full under- 
lip quivered and her large eyes moistened shin- 
ingly) “what the women say of me behind my 
back! As if I did not hear them tell one an- 
other — these fine feminine gentlefolk of River- 
view — that it would be a mercy for me to marry 
even moderately well! This would give me a 
name, at least, they murmur among themselves, 
in their gossipy afternoon visits at one another’s 
handsome houses. They say .it to their hus- 
bands and their brothers. They marvel at 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


49 


Aunt Emily’s ‘courage’ and ‘unconventional- 
ism.’ Oh, as if I didn’t hear it all in spirit 
better than though my ears had heard it in the 
flesh!” 

She bent closer above the small, pinched face. 
“Yes, Nita,” swept on her turbid introspections, 
“I would , this hour, be you rather than my- 
self! ... I would — yes, before the God that I 
believe in, though so many are doubting Him at 
this latter day !” 

A turn in the swift current of her own dreary 
meditation gave her a new vista of feeling. 
Hope rallied at the silent inward mention of 
that Presence which she supremely trusted. 
Her face softened, brightened. With great 
tenderness and caution she rose, carrying Anita 
in her arms, and placed her on a lounge full of 
soft cushions. It was yet several hours before 
her little cousin’s bed-time, and she doubted if 
this slumber, the result of exhaustion, might 
long endure. Still, the recumbent shape, while 
she stood and watched it, gave no sign of stir- 
ring. And now, thus watching it, Eloise felt 
as if dark curtains of mist were being slowly 
drawn from her soul. 

“Despair and I part company,” she almost 
whispered aloud, her lips faintly moving. “I 
might have known that mournful mood would 
vanish. There’s always comfort for one that 
has faith, as I have, in the eternal goodness of 
things. I’m brave again now — as brave in my 
way as Aunt Emily was in hers, when she went 
and found me hidden amid poverty and filth, 


50 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY , 


and gave me her protecting love through all 
those after years.” A smile here flooded her 
face, and nobly beautified it. “Ah, as if I 
hadn’t that to be thankful for!” 

“Miss Eloise.” 

It was Anita’s nurse, who had entered un- 
heard. The girl raised her hand in quick mo- 
nition, and then pointed with it to the couch. 
After that she talked for a little while with the 
nurse in low tones. 

“Look me up, Margaret, if she should wake 
suddenly and want me very much. Her moth- 
er’s attack has got her into a nervous state, and 
I’m afraid this sleep won’t last long. I’m going 
upstairs to listen at Mrs. Thirl wall’s door for a 
minute, and I do so hope I’ll find that she's 
fallen asleep. Afterward I may be out on the 
piazza with the new doctor; he’s waiting for his 
prescription to come from the village.” 

“He’s gone into the parlor now, miss,” re- 
plied Margaret, “with Mr. Dunstan and the 
others.” 

“The others? Why, who, Margaret?” 

“Oh, quite a company, miss — ” 

Just then a shrill laugh, muffled by remote- 
ness, drifted to their ears. 

“Elma Blagdon’s laugh,” decided Eloise. 
“.She’s heard of Aunt Emily’s illness, no doubt. 
How bad news travels in a place like this! 
Unless I’m wrong, Dunstan would marry her 
to-morrow, if she’d let him, just for her father’s 
millions. He’ll take her coming as a personal 
honor; it will console him for being delayed in 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


51 


his trip to Newport. Shall I go into the draw- 
ing-room if I find Aunt Emily does not need me 
upstairs? Why not? My spleenful vapors have 
departed, now. I’m my own sane self again . . . 
And besides, Dr. Moncrieffe’s there, of course, 
waiting for the prescription. I must see him 
before he leaves, anyway.” 

For several minutes after she had gained the 
door of her aunt’s bedroom she stood listening. 
No sign of restlessness reached her. Then she 
softly unclosed the door. The room had been 
so darkened that the dreamy golden light out- 
side made only thin threads of luminance at the 
shut edges of the blinds. Very softly she stole 
nearer to the bed on which her aunt lay. Be- 
side the dimly visible face and bosom, she 
waited. Then came a faint, respiratory sound 
that filled her with joy. 

“Aunt’s in a peaceful sleep,” was her thought, 
while she slipped from the room again as noise- 
lessly as if she were treading on snow. “I’ll 
bring him that good news. Something about 
him, just in the short time that I’ve known 
him, makes me feel that he’ll be glad in a sort 
of human, unprofessional way, different from 
poor old Dr. Bascomb’s. What is there about 
him that so pleases and interests? I wonder if 
everybody feels the same strong but delicate 
spell. Aunt Emily did — I’m sure of it, though 
I’ve not yet had the chance to talk of him with 
her. Still, I saw that he’d charmed her, know- 
ing her as I do. ” 

A little later Eloise approached the drawing- 


52 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


room. Quite a babble of voices reigned there. 
But as she entered, it dwindled to almost a 
stillness. 


Y. 

All the grand folk in Riverview (and its 
wealthy land-owners might have resented any 
less dignified title) regarded Eloise precisely as 
we have heard her own somber reflections de- 
clare. They liked her from the personal point 
of view, but from the social one they regarded 
her with commiserating dismay. Her aunt had 
had a Knickerbocker maiden name dear to the 
new rich, and among River view grandees the 
element of the new rich was predominant. Mrs. 
Thirlwall was not to be ignored, even though 
she might choose to dally with perilous foibles. 
Eloise was- one of these. “You hardly know 
how to treat the girl,” a certain strait-laced 
Riverviewian had said. And she treated her 
with just that doubt, only shrouding it in a sus- 
picious politeness. Eloise detected the false 
flavor of her amenities and in return treated 
the lady ever afterward with hueless reserve. 
Her aunt scented the truth, and almost cut the 
same lady in consequence. This was a warning 
to the others, and they heeded it. But Eloise 
perceived that they heeded it , and a stab was 
in that very discovery. She came forward, 
now, with easy graco and greeted the four 
guests in the drawing-room. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


53 


“We are so glad,” said Mrs. Pinckney Cas- 
silis, “to hear that your aunt is better.” 

“Very, very glad,” said Mr. Pinckney Cas- 
silis, in a species of suave echo. 

“I simply couldn’t stay aivo.y,” shrilled Elma 
Blagdon. “She once told me she had heart- 
trouble, and I wasn’t surprised. She makes 
you think she’s all heart, the moment you’ve 
got really to know her.” 

“The news give my girl a reel shock,” said 
Mr. Abijah Blagdon, fondling his daughter with 
spectacled eyes. “Didn’t it, El?” 

“I guess it did!” assented the young 
heiress, without even a glance at her father. 
“Mercy! I don’t know what we should do at 
Riverview, Miss Thirl wall, if anything hap- 
pened to your aunt.” The young lady sud- 
denly aired a rattling laugh and pointed her 
parasol at Dunstan. She looked about the 
room, sweeping her eyes from face to face. 
“It’s given him a scare!” She then tossed 
toward Dunstan one slim hand, clad in a long 
fawny glove of Swedish kid. “He had his traps 
almost packed for Newport. Serves him right, 
though, doesn’t it? He’s always thinking of 
himself. He needs to be pulled up once in a 
while, just to punish his conceit.” 

“Oh, come, now,” remonstrated Pinckney 
Cassilis. “You’re a little hard, Miss Elma, 
are you not?” 

“Pinckney,” shot in his wife, crisply, “it’s 
no affair of yours , anyhow.” 

“Gracious!” cried Elma, with a measuring 


54 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


glance at Cassilis, from crown to boot-sole. 
“How your wife sets you down! I’d kick, if 
I were you ; but you never kick. See here, Mrs. 
Cassilis,” she flashed on, “some day I’m going 
to put some spirit into that husband of yours. 
Yes, I am! I’m going to flirt with him like 
mad. And when he’s just wild about me, and 
you’re crazy with jealousy, I’m going to say to 
him: ‘Now, strike for your rights, and tell your 
wife that if she don’t stop snubbing you, there’s 
a divorce court in Dakota, and we’ll both take a 
parlor-car for it on the morning train.’ ” 

Mrs. Cassilis looked amiably bored, while a 
titter broke from Du ns tan. 

“Oh, El,” smiled her father, “how that tongue 
o’ yours can skip along!” And then he gazed 
round at the assembled auditors with his heavy, 
sallow visage puckered by paternal pride. 

Mrs. Cassilis, who chanced to be seated near 
Monerieffe, said to him, in a lowered voice that 
had not the least seeming hint of pique: 

“Miss Blagdon wakes us all up so. Had you 
met her before?” 

“No,” replied Monerieffe. “I’m still a stran- 
ger here. ’ ’ 

Mrs. Cassilis gave him one of her complete, 
clear-edged smiles. Everything about her was 
obvious, promptly determinable. You somehow 
took her in at a glance, as if she had been a 
white strip of sand under a cloudless sky. She 
appeared to have no reservations, no subtleties. 
Such as she was, she was that in unrestricted 
entirety. Not that she impressed you with any 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


55 


idea of sincerity and candor. But, on the other 
hand, her gracious and affable glare of person- 
ality involved no hint of deceit. To Moncrieffe 
her limpid eyes were provokingly round and 
blue, her mouth, chin, brows and tin tings pro- 
vokingly fresh and regular, her trim-bodiced 
bust and neat-compressed waist provokingly 
symmetric. She seemed to him, as he quietly 
watched her, the incarnation of conventional 
nicety. She affected him just as charmlessly 
as a piece of arithmetic would have done, if 
disclosed in colors instead of the ordinary black 
and white. He somehow caught himself dislik- 
ing her for being so shallowly composite, so un- 
engagingly correct. She reminded him of cer- 
tain lyrics which he had read in magazines, 
lukewarmly approved and speedily forgotten. 

“Oh, but you’re not such a stranger,” said 
Mrs. Cassilis. “We have all seen you driving 
round; we’ve known of your being here; we’ve 
talked about you. . .” She now showed him 
her beautiful, milky teeth in an affluent smile. . . 
“We’ve even gossiped about you, and wondered 
if you were as nice as you looked.” 

“Ah,” said Moncrieffe, “then you’ve been 
setting for me a standard to which I must live 
uj). I only wish that I could do so.” 

“You’ll have one advantage,” said the lady, 
with neutral sociality. “I mean the absence of 
all rivalry. They say that poor dear old Dr. 
Bascomb will never practice again.” 

“That’s my chance, I suppose. One nail 
drives out another.” 


56 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“You like the idea of having your chance, 
then? You’re anxious to push on, to succeed, 
and all that?” She did not wait for his reply, 
but continued: “I think your face shows much 
energy, and that is the chief source of success, 
isn’t it?” 

“Faces are poor portraits of character, I some- 
times am led to conclude, Mrs. Cassilis.” 

He joined his hands lightly together and 
jolted them up and down, with either elbow 
on either knee. This gave him a leaning pos- 
ture in her direction, and she herself leaned 
graciously forward a little to answer it. 

“Oh, yes, you’re quite right. Faces are 
dreadful falsifiers.” Her voice was keyed very 
low. “Miss Elma Blagdon’s face, for instance. 
Would you imagine, to look at her, that she was 
so very bold?” 

“You mean — vocally?” 

“Oh, she speaks boldly enough. But, then, 
she acts even more boldly still. She does pre- 
cisely as she pleases. I never saw anything like 
the universal toleration she receives. You’ve 
just heard her; you understand. But that isn’t 
a circumstance to the things that she has often 
both said and done. I say she looks like a ves- 
tal virgin and behaves like a bacchante. Am I 
right?” 

“I can’t answer as regards the behavior,” 
trimmed Moncrieffe, in politic undertone. “But 
as for the looks — well, she surely appears inno- 
cent.” 

“Doesn’t she?” kindled Mrs. Cassilis, yet 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


5 ? 


with smoldering composure. “Just see that 
pale, narrowish face, with the big, white- 
lidded eyes and the prim, proper little mouth 
that might be a nun’s. You men never notice 
women’s clothes, but everything she’s got on is 
of the very choicest. That white jabot is worth 
— well, you’ll think me vulgar. And Heaven 
knows, she's vulgar enough. You mustn’t take 
her as a specimen of Riverview refinement,” 

“Ah,” said Moncrieffe, shaking his head, “do 
not tempt me into rash personalities.” 

“That’s charming ,” murmured Mrs. Cassilis. 
“She wouldn’t think so; she hasn’t the delicacy 
of perception to feel those delightful little 
speeches, which all refined women treasure, no 
matter how insincere they may judge them. . . 
But Elrna has excellent traits of another sort. 
She’s good-hearted and she’s loyal. She’d make 
a devoted wife. She might not a] ways be a com- 
fortable one, but she’d be true as steel — I’ll say 
that of her. And — ” Here Mrs. Cassilis looked 
transiently troubled and gave her head a flut- 
tered toss. “As for being a match , you know, 
she’s one of the best in the whole country. Per- 
haps you haven’t heard about her father? He’s 
horrible, perfectly horrible, but he’s worth six or 
seven millions, and she’s his only child. They 
came here and built that monstrous stone palace 
down by the river, about six years ago. Mr. Blag- 
don made his money in patent medicines. That 
is, he began so. First he brought out some popu- 
lar 4 water’ or ‘ointment,’ or Heaven knows what. 
It partially failed, I’m told, and then, with the 


58 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


sum thus secured, he bought an interest in some- 
thing called ‘Nervaline,’ a popular tonic. For 
several years he defaced the landscape of his 
native country with flamboyant statements 
about the precious properties of this drug. 
Then he became full possessor of it, and gradu- 
ally got his grasp upon other quackeries, pills, 
lotions, cosmetics, all with highfalutin befool- 
ing names. Then he began to purchase real 
estate, and after a few more years he became 
a financial king. Meanwhile his only child, 
Elma, had grown up, and returned to his 
hearthstone after several years of foreign 
schooling. Whatever they’ve done in a so- 
cial way, as yet, has been entirely of her de- 
vising. Not that they’ve done much. She 
doesn’t make any real effort. She rather sneers 
at the ‘Four Hundred,’ and all that. She likes 
it here, and often stays here till late on into the 
winter. She winds him round her finger. He 
hates to be idle; he wants to go back among 
his patent medicines; he longs for new salves 
and elixirs to conquer. But she won’t hear of 
it; she keeps him in a continual state of un- 
relieved boredom and paternal adoration. I 
never saw anything at once so romantic and 
so ludicrous as the way in which he worships 
her. I often wonder if he doesn’t expect her to 
make a great match, some day. But no; he 
wouldn’t presume to argue the question with 
her if she decided to-morrow to marry one of 
the grooms. He’d simply settle a big lot of 
money on the groom, I imagine, provided she 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


59 


said ‘do it.’ Whenever she says ‘do it,’ he 
meekly and sweetly does. Really,” ended Mrs. 
Cassilis, in her crisp, authoritative style, “there 
was never such a chance for a would-be son-in- 
law to Croesus.” 

“And has the daughter of Croesus many 
eager applicants?” asked Moncrieffe. 

“No — very few. Eima is all caprice and 
whimsicality in that respect. Of course, you 
know, Dunstan Thirl wall, here, is dying to 
marry her. But she snubs him without a spark 
of mercy. He’ll never get her. It would be a 
good match on both sides, for Dunstan could 
give her position. But she doesn’t care a fig 
for position. If she did she could get it. Here 
she has it; everybody calls on her here, and 
often she tears round the place alone on horse- 
back, looking like crazy Jane (whoever crazy 
Jane was), and does generally quite as she 
pleases. If she chose to lift her finger in New 
York the swells would all flock round her. 
That’s the way of things nowadays, you know. 
A girl with the prospect of all that money, who 
can really behave like a lady when she tries, 
can slip into the most exclusive drawing-rooms 
before you know she’s really there. . . I do hope 
she’ll marry sensibly when she does marry. But 
her great trouble is that she’s so shockingly un- 
civil to almost every young man she meets. . . 
Now, you, for instance, Dr. Moncrieffe; I am 
really amazed that she’s treated you as she has. ” 

“Treated me? Why, she hasn’t treated me 
at all. She’s merely stared at me and asked me 


6Q 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


if I supposed many people in Riverview would 
employ a, doctor of my youth and inexperience. ” 

‘ ‘That’s a great deal — for her.” 

“Really? It appears very little — to me.” 

“She’ll show you more attention, if you care 
to receive it. Perhaps you don’t.” 

The bland blue eyes were fixed, now, upr.n 
Moncrieffe’s face with an intensity that puzzled 
him. Had this woman, after all, the capacity 
of hidden meanings, despite her apparent sharp- 
edged superficiality? 

“I am afraid that I don’t,” he smiled. 

“But if she’s nice to you?” 

“I shall be nice in return, I hope.” 

“You hope? You don’t know, then?” 

“I could know better if I knew Miss Blagdon 
better.” 

“But you know she’s enormously rich?” 

“Oh, yes; that seems to be quite an adaman- 
tine fact.” 

“But it’s a fact that many men of your age 
would think immensely important.” 

She did not say “many men of your age and 
your limited income;” but he felt that this am- 
pler statement had been implied, and drew him- 
self up, a little haughtily. 

“There are many men of my age, Mrs. Cassi- 
lis, whose tastes and tendencies I could scarcely 
be expected to share.” 

“Oh, of course. But still — ” 

Here Elma Blagdon shot in a laugh of saucy 
mockery. “It isn’t fair to monopolize the new 
doctor as you’re doing, Mrs. Cassilis. Male 


A MAEffYR OF DESTINY. 


61 


society in River view is altogether too great a 
rarity. I don’t doubt Miss Thirl wall is secretly 
furious, and I’m openly so.” 

Mrs. Cassilis pushed out her pink underlip, 
humoring the girl’s random satire, though per- 
haps reluctantly. 

“Don’t you forget Mr. Thirlwall and my hus- 
band?” she tossed back. “Really, Dr. Mon- 
crieffe and I think you’re paying them both a 
very poor compliment.” 

“Oh, I’m afraid to look at your husband ,” 
cried Elma. “And as for Mr. Dunstan Thirl- 
wall, he’s sulking because he’s been cut off in 
the flower of his intended trip to Newport.” 

“Dear me!” said Mrs. Cassilis, coloring a 
little and smiling more broadly to conceal it, 
as women will sometimes do. “I thought you 
announced, a minute ago, your intention of 
flirting madly with my husband. Now is your 
opportunity. Mr. Thirlwall, being distrait , 
as you declare him, will bury himself in tempo- 
rary solitude just to oblige you, and Miss Thirl- 
wall will perhaps come over and join us; for 
we haven’t yet reached the frenzied state of 
flirtation, have we, doctor?” 

All this was said rather effectively, and 
proved a cogent if brief damper upon the 
volatile spirits of Elma. Yet it was said in 
the secure, even voice of one whose emotions 
were under an almost thorough control, like a 
well-oiled mechanism. Still, there are systems 
of machinery that strike fire, now and then,, 
while operative. “This woman,” Moncrieffe 


62 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


concluded, as he now watched her, “is strenu- 
ous without being in the least profound. A 
fervid motive might grasp and sway her, and 
she would give to the carrying out of it far 
more vehement momentum than if she were 
spiritually sensitive to its moral lights and 
shades, or even to its claims in the minor con- 
sideration of good taste or bad.” 

Here he was unconsciously right. In a little 
while the messenger to the village arrived with 
the prescription, and the small assemblage in 
the drawing-room was necessarily broken up. 
The Cassilises were driven away from Green- 
dingle in their superfine open carriage, with 
two liveried men on the box, and a pair of 
modish-trapped bays that told in equal terms 
of good blood and good grooming. 

“I wonder what you do or say to that Blag- 
don girl,” began Mrs. Cassilis, with her voice 
hard as iron, “that makes her so vulgarly rude 
to me whenever you and I meet her together.” 

Pinckney Cassilis looked down at the big 
curved handle of his cane, which he held be- 
tween his legs at an indolent, toppling slant. 
He was dressed in the height of fashion; you 
might have called him- a kind of curled darling, 
with his speckless linen, his symmetric neck- 
tie, his almost effulgent boots. But he was 
the sort of darling muscular and manful 
enough in frame and face to stand a fair 
amount of curling without the faintest effemi- 
nate results. Past doubt he was a superb 
physical specimen of the human male animal, 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


63 


clean of jowl, classic in the cut of every feat- 
ure, dowered with a crop of short gold ringlets, 
woman - handed, woman - footed, yet with the 
chest and limbs of an athlete. About five years 
ago he had been a penniless young idler, too 
stupid (as a witty foe once said of him) even to 
possess a vice. Society had taken him up, though 
he had scarcely money enough to return its patron- 
age by appearing there clad in a decent evening 
coat. Mammas disapproved him as a trouble- 
some, dangerous young Adonis. But the daugh- 
ters of mammas took him out in the cotilion and 
drifted into ball-room corners with him quite 
irrepressibly, and murmured of him at their 
maidenly gatherings. 4 ‘Isn’t it too bad he’s 
so dreadfully poor?” Some of those on whom 
his great, soft, gray, unintelligent eyes had not 
beamed at all admiringly, would add, “And 
then, you know, he’s a perfect nobody.” For 
a season or so he remained merely what is called 
a “dancing man.” The exclusives did not ask 
him to their dinners or their smaller “affairs”; 
he was regarded in the light of what some one 
called the decorative ineligibles. If he had 
been even fairly clever he might have pushed 
his way, and got a little into the inner circles. 
But he made no effort to exploit the splendid 
endowment of beauty which fate had bequeathed 
him. In almost any other society except the 
sordidly plutocratic one of New York, he would 
have found himself petted and even lionized for 
his extraordinary looks. In Paris he would 
have been an idol of married women, twirled 


64 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


his mustache up at the ends, worn a beard 
with an acute point, or perhaps two of them, 
and sighed sentimentalism through fumes of 
cigarette-smoke. In London he would have 
been petted by many charming and possibly 
distinguished women, have lounged and loitered 
in the pleasaunces of Upper Bohemia, and per- 
haps have sauntered, now and then, among gar- 
dens where hedges and shrubs had been clean- 
clipped by aristocracy’s most trenchant shears. 
In New York he was a tolerated dangler and 
pensioner, and nothing more. Crumbs fell to 
him from the tables of the potentates — crumbs 
in the way of benevolent condescension — w T hich 
he ate with obeisant gusto. But one day there 
came a great change in his fortunes and pros- 
pects. A debutante named Caroline Opdyke, 
who was also a conspicuous heiress, fell in love 
with him, and made it plain to him that she 
would take his name for the asking. She was 
a very handsome girl, whose father, a railway 
magnate, had railroaded her, as they said, into 
society. Not merely handsome, she was also 
presentable, despite nebulous Western ante- 
cedents. Like Elma Blagdon, she had had a 
term of foreign training; in these days of easy 
international transit what millionaire’s daugh- 
ter fails to secure this educational boon? 

With Caroline Opdyke it had swiftly become, 
as the French say, “to take or to leave.” She 
left a score or so of other suitors and took Pinck- 
ney Cassilis. It was brutally declared that the 
young lady instructed him to offer himself to 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


65 


her, and that he did so with grateful expedition. 
True or not, this report gained yide credence. 
Somebody sneered, “The girl is throwing her- 
self away on a pauper. ” Somebody else lit the 
harsh edges of the sneer with humor by reply- 
ing: “It’s of no consequence; she will be rich 
enough to gratify the most expensive tastes.” 

Very rich the sudden death of her father 
soon made her, and while yet in deep mourning 
she was quietly married to the beautiful young 
man of her choice. Pinckney Cassilis became 
the center of an ardent male envy, cloaked in 
congratulation. He believed himself a phenom- 
enally lucky fellow, and declared so with an in- 
nocence that challenged covert ridicule. But 
later he may have changed this estimate of his 
own peculiar career. In the opinion of many 
worldly critics he might have found copious ex- 
cuse for disappointment. It was expected of the 
young couple that after their return from a six- 
months’ residence in Europe they would take a 
“leading” social place. It is always thus ex- 
pected in New York of people who have been 
fashionably accepted and who have come into a 
large lot of money. Leading means feeding, in 
various dainty and lavish ways. No one can 
lead who cannot feed, and to feed satisfactorily 
the expenditure of at least seventy thousand a 
year is looked for. Otherwise, as the metro- 
politan phrase runs, “you must take a back 
seat.” To the astonishment and disgust of the 
“Four Hundred,” Mr. and Mrs. Cassilis took a 
back seat. It was so far back, indeed, that for 


66 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


a whole season they were scarcely at all dis- 
cernible. Then they further offended every- 
body by purchasing an estate in the country 
and living there nearly all the time. Their 
“country” was Riverview, suburban, if one 
pleased, but still distinctly rural. And in a 
little more time the cause of this retirement 
began to be gossiped about. Caroline Cassilis 
was so morbidlj 7 " jealous of her handsome hus- 
band that to have any other woman beam upon 
him, however harmlessly, cost her pangs of the 
keenest disrelish. 

At first this discovery begot all conceivable 
phases of raillery and scoff. Then absence from 
town caused the pair to be at least partially for- 
gotten. But at Riverview Mrs. Cassilis, on her 
own side, arranged that she should be very dis- 
tinctly borne in mind. Even the maids and 
serving-men grinned at her grotesque jealousy. 
But this was not all. If her husband had been 
some triumphant fortune-hunter she might have 
turned him, soon after the honeymoon, half mad 
with chagrin. Every hour, every minute in the 
day, her conduct would have reminded him that 
she held the purse-strings and she alone. She 
was extremely fond of horses and of driving 
them ; all orders at the stables came solely from 
herself. She inspected the harness with an eye 
toward its proper polishing, saw that the stalls 
were kept in a state of neatness, not only knew 
every whip from the other, but its precise place 
of deposit as well ; and in respect to the purchase, 
location and tendance of the carriages held her- 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


67 


self arbiter supreme. In all domestic affairs a 
monarchy quite as unlimited was affirmed. “I 
am master and mistress in one,” might have 
been stamped as a motto on her silver, below 
the Cassilis crest which she had either created 
or disinterred. 

But poor Pinckney Oassilis had let himself be 
married with no exorbitant hopes of ruling the 
household roast. It might have been said that 
far from showing himself a fortune-hunter he 
had allowed a fortune to hunt him — and run 
him effectually to earth. Still, his disappoint- 
ment was by no means moderate. To some ob- 
servers he represented an incarnate punishment. 
“This is what a man may get through marry- 
ing for money,” they declared, though not in 
these words, or sometimes not in any words at 
all, but merely by the implication of their tacit 
disdain: “a gilded and unsexing slavery, a 
marital degradation worse than that of some 
rag-picker, who at least holds his own as a 
husband, though his province of matrimonial 
dignity be bounded by an attic or a cellar.” 

Pinckney Oassilis would hardly have under- 
stood any such species of fulminating eloquence. 
But a wise writer has said that nearly all yoked 
creatures have their private opinions. He was 
a yoked creature, and he presumably had his; 
and now, as the dapper Cassilis carriage bowled 
along through the sweet, idyllic midsummer 
twilight, he gave his wife an answer so un- 
wontedly self-assertive that she at once sniffed 
in it the signs of smoldering rebellion. 


68 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“Elma Blagdon’s a very nice girl, though her 
manners are a bit frisky and skylarking. She 
only talks that way to tease you, Carrie, and 
she’d shut right down if you didn’t show you 
were teased. But, bless my soul ! a child could 
set you on fire with jealousy; and you’ve got 
about as much cause for it with her or anybody 
else as if we’d just celebrated our diamond wed- 
ding.” 

To almost any other woman this faintly fret- 
ful outburst from a spouse of such protracted 
forbearance would have caused no serious dis- 
may. But with Caroline Cassilis it was differ- 
ent. She straightened herself on the cushioned 
seat of her comfortable carriage and looked at 
her husband with suspicious alarm. 


YI. 

This was the first time he had ever accused 
her of jealousy, and she was ridiculously jealous 
enough to feel in the fact something significant 
and portentous. As a wife she had begun 
fatally wrong. She had been in love with him, 
and was in love with him still. But in marry- 
ing him her world had taught her to fear that 
she was merely buying him and nothing more. 
This thought had been like a poisoning worm 
amid the rose-bower of maidenly sentiment. 
After marriage she found herself guarding her 
money and playing with all her possessions the 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


69 


proprietary martinet, not from really avaricious 
or tyrannic motives, but because she could never 
make up her mind that it would have been pos- 
sible to win the man of her choice if she had 
been poor like himself. The picture that she 
presented of a woman who had striven to pur- 
chase happiness and found it unpurchasable 
through retaliatory causes lodged within her 
own spirit, was one which brimmed with pathos, 
notwithstanding that comic light in which many 
gazers heedlessly viewed it from day to day. 
But indeed if the only humor in the world were 
of a sort that had no sorrowful side to it, our 
planet would be a far drearier dwelling-place 
than now. 

Mrs. Cassilis answered her husband with a 
frosty frown. “Whatever 3^our faults may be, 
Pinckney, I didn’t suppose that silly conceit was 
one of them. My jealousy, as you call it, is 
merely a very natural pique. I only wish you 
were a little more jealous on your own side — I 
mean of my dignity as your wife.” 

“Upon my word, Caroline,” he returned, with 
conciliating zeal, “it doesn’t strike me that your 
dignity is ever in the least danger. You know 
how to take care of it, my dear, at all times, 
exception ally well.” 

“ Oh, if that’s meant for sarcasm — ” she 
bridled. 

“ But it isn’t,” he suavely contradicted. 
“ You do hold your own, always and every- 
where. If a person like Elina Blagdon tries to 
make you appear as though you didn’t hold it, 


70 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


her failure should be all the more a feather in 
your cap.” 

“He’s throwing dust in my eyes,” she 
thought, with the piteous and mute hysteria 
of an hallucination passionately fixed. “ In 
their talks together she has persuaded him that 
I’m jealous. He would never have hit on that 
idea of his own accord. He never had the least 
flair of it formerly.” 

Aloud, she said, with an odd, smiling gri- 
mace : 

“The girl bounces, at times, beyond all decent 
bounds of breeding. Just before we left, you no 
doubt heard her literally ask me if she couldn’t 
dine with us.” 

“And you named next Thursday.” 

“Yes,” replied his wife, a little vaguely. He 
started at something peculiar in her inflection, 
and the next minute she went on, with her ac- 
customed clean-clipped decision of tone: “And 
I shall make a little social affair of it. I found 
time to ask the new doctor, and he accepted. I 
had also found time to discover that he’s ex- 
tremely good form. Then we’ll have one or two 
more people — a harmony, you know, of Jacks 
and Jills. We’ve not done much dinner-giving 
lately, and I dare say you’ll be quite pleased at 
the plan if you’re put next to that obstreperous 
Elma.” 

Pinckney Cassilis crushed a sigh beneath his 
blond mustache. He knew very well that he 
would be “put” as far away from Elma Blag- 
don as the limited circumference of their din- 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


71 


ing- table would permit. He did not care a 
dime for the prospective separation. But it 
irked and stung him to think that his wife 
should go on like this, burlesquing all that was 
sacred in her own love for him — a love which 
he admired and even held in a kind of awe. If 
he had it perpetually on his conscience that the 
love was not responded to in kind, then this 
may have been his reason for not precipitating 
a crucial conjugal “scene,” in which candor 
would at length meet candor, hers as nude as 
his, and both like wrestlers stripped for fight. 
It would have been a fight from which perma- 
nent peace might have sprung, provided Pinck- 
ney Cassilis had felt himself empowered to wage 
it. But did he so feel? Was there not in his 
soul a silent terror of that ransacking arraign- 
ment which might front him, and to which the 
easy-going, comfortable semi-indifference of his 
perfectly faithful yet perfectly fireless allegiance 
might present new and embroiling contrast? 
His remarkable beauty was not the accompani- 
ment of any remarkable mental strength; but 
he had the distinct comprehension that reti- 
cence and submission were the more politic 
course where one passionless life has joined it- 
self to the passion which reigns vigilant and 
alert in another. And so, on his side as on 
hers, this “marriage for money” teemed witli 
melancholy satire. Tyranny, on the one hand, 
that inevitably hated itself for being so ; slavery, 
on the other hand, that feared to seek its free- 
dom — these were the conditions that retroact- 


72 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


ively were destined to work upon other exist- 
ences in the chronicle here unfolded. 

Moncrieffe’s was one of the latter, though he 
little dreamed that in asking him to dine with 
her on the following Thursday, Caroline Cassilis 
had a design and a desire to plant a spark of 
attraction for him in the capricious bosom of 
Elma Blagdon. He staid for over an hour at 
Greendingle that night after the guests had 
gone. Mrs. Thirl wall’s placid sleep still con- 
tinued, and he finally thought it best to leave 
the prescription in Eloise’s hands, after it had 
been brought, bottled and labeled, from the vil- 
lage, with clear instructions as to just how it 
should be administered in case the small hours 
of the night should visit her aunt with restless 
.ills. 

A civil, if taciturn, groom drove him home- 
ward through the mild starlight. He left with 
a sense of very sweet and grateful farewell 
from Eloise and of neutral urbanity from 
Dunstan. 

“You’re in luck, Basil,” said Whitewright, 
'when they had met and “talked things over.” 
His eyes twinkled with fun. “In a few weeks, 
I suppose, every pretty woman at River view 
will be playing invalid.” 

“The more the merrier — for my bank ac- 
count,” laughed Moncrieffe. His voice grew 
serious as he referred, now for a second time, 
to Eloise’s burst of emotion. “She must have 
meant, of course, but one thing.” 

“Oh, beyond doubt, yes — her illegitimacy. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


73 


She’s the dearest of dear girls. We’ve known 
each other since children. Only a few days ago 
she came into my shop, and gave a start on see- 
ing me.” 

“You were unexpected.” 

“My appearance was; I’d changed so for the 
worse.” 

“You persist in saying that.” 

“Only when it says itself, my boy. I don’t 
shirk it; that’s all.” 

“But you seem almost fond, Magnus, of the 
idea that you’re — ” 

“Doomed?” he smiled. “I’m not in the least 
distressed by it.” 

“Pshaw! we’re all doomed, for that matter.” 

“True enough, Basil ; and between our ‘sooner’ 
and ‘later’ there’s only the difference of a yes- 
terday and a to-morrow. We’re all in a sinking 
ship. Some of us have a firm faith in the life- 
boats; others think there’s only a slim chance 
of salvation from them ; and others are resigned 
to being lulled tranquilly asleep in the great ob- 
livious ocean.” 

“You’re among the last-named company, I 
surmise. With all the gentle arrogance of an 
agnostic, you probably divide the passengers 
into ‘first-cabin’ rationalists, ‘intermediate’ 
trimmers, and ‘steerage’ pietists.” 

“I’m not so arbitrary, ’ ’ sparkled White wright, 
relishing the metaphor. 

“Still, that ‘great oblivious ocean’ appeals to 
you as a very comfortable nirvana. You don’t 
expect @f it an*y subaqueous goal of refuge.” 


74 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“Oh, no; sea-kings and mermaids have been 
scientifically abolished.’ * 

“I see — like angels and other celestial appur- 
tenances,” Moncrieffe mused aloud. “It’s ex- 
traordinary,” he went on, with more enlivened 
manner, “how this age of doubt brings comfort 
to one mind and distress to another. All your 
magnificent fatalism, my dear Magnus, is born 
of your conviction that the old forms of faith 
are fallacious and that man, having received no 
divine revelation as to his immortality after 
death, may sensibly rate himself among all the 
other destructible products of nature. But there, 
on the other hand, is Mrs. Thirlwall, who be- 
lieves (or disbelieves) very much along your 
lines, and yet derives from her convictions, I 
should say, very little else than the acutest 
misery. ’ ’ 

“I’ve been greatly interested,” said White- 
wright, “in what you told me that she confessed 
to you on this particular point. I can under- 
stand her feelings so well,” he pursued, while 
his black eyes brightened self-searchingly. “I 
had the same revolt and reluctance, once. I 
was pierced by a sense of tragedy in my own 
case. For a while I was weakened, even ter- 
rified by it. Then relief came ; it was the relief 
of self-effacement.” 

Moncrieffe made a gesture of dissent. “Ah, 
that is just what many another would find so 
unrelieving ! Grant that man is only a very 
minor part of creation. Go further, and say that 
the earth, with its millions of living shapes, is 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


75 


of no more relative consequence than a piece of 
cheese swarming with maggots. Very well; as 
a maggot endowed with intelligence and imagi- 
nation I should persist in hoping — ” 

“Ah, hoping, yes,” cried Whitewright, as 
merrily as though the talk had turned on some 
subject replete with cheerfulness. “Hope, how- 
ever, is temperamental. It is all the religion 
that some people possess; I dare say that in 
combination with charity it is really the only 
religion Eloise Thirlwall possesses. But with 
resignation it has nothing to do.” The mirth- 
ful light faded from his face and left there a pen- 
sive afterglow. “Resignation is the child of 
disappointment — always. And disappointment 
is better than hope.” 

“Magnus!” 

“I mean it. Hope is a bird that always flut- 
ters and struggles when it flies ; it has no secur- 
ity; it never hangs poised and motionless in 
mid-air, like the Theban eagle. The people who 
hope for things to happen are forever doubting 
if they will. Those who have made a permanent 
truce with disappointment neither expect nor de- 
sire ; they accept what arrives, without gratitude 
and without irritation.” 

Moncrieffe had long ago ceased to marvel at 
the oddly joyous pessimism of his friend. It 
had once struck him as almost uncanny in its 
tenets, but of late he had grown to evolve a curi- 
ous and apt harmony from its relation to White- 
wright’s precarious tenure of health. In almost 
any other man he would have denounced the 


76 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


whole mood of mind as an attitude, a pose ; but 
in this instance, and at this late day of their 
acquaintanceship, to have done so would have 
seemed like an act of wanton irreverence. If 
Whitewright reaped consolation from the in- 
consolable he at least gathered his harvest with 
the most unaffected and legitimate sort of hus- 
bandry. 

“You spoke of Eloise Thirlwall’s hope being 
her probable religion,” Moncrieffe now said, 
turning their stream of talk from a channel 
which friendly fondness made at no time attrac- 
tive to him. “With such native buoyancy she 
should look forward to the shielding and aidful 
chances of marriage. But I judge she is a girl 
who would never marry otherwise than from 
motives of the heart, no matter how much the 
dread of her aunt’s death might urge her to the 
contrary.” 

“Right, Basil. ... Is she the sort of girl 
you could fancy yourself falling in love with?” 

“She’s the sort of girl almost any man could 
fancy himself falling in love with,” was the 
evasive answer. “I’ve lost my heart elsewhere, 
though,” he added, with light abruptness. 

“You mean — ?” 

“To her sweet elderly aunt, Mrs. Thirlwall.” 

“And you believe her malady past real re- 
lief?” 

“Relief? No. Cure? That’s another affair. 
I want to make a very close and severe exami- 
nation to-morrow. The subject, as you know, is 
one that I’ve given marked attention to. It 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


77 


would overjoy me, Magnus, to find that some 
functional disturbance was at the root of her 
attacks instead of the organic lesion they’ve 
assured her she’s afflicted with.” 

On the morrow Moncrieffe found his patient 
up and about. She told him that she had passed 
a wondrously restful and invigorating night, and 
her good tidings were brightly reflected in the 
eyes of her niece. Dunstan had departed at an 
early hour for Newport, and possibly as a peace- 
ful celebration of this event Anita was behaving 
in the most tractable manner. When the time 
came for being separated from her mother, she 
moved out of the room at her piteous little am- 
bling pace by the side of Margaret, not even 
casting toward Eloise that martyrized look 
which the beloved cousin had expected. 

They had gone to Mrs. Thirlwall’s bedroom, 
by this time, and Eloise now turned with a 
smile to Moncrieffe and told him that she sup- 
posed he would soon want her to follow in 
Anita’s footsteps. 

“But oh, if when I return,” she went on, 
“you only have some fine bit of encouraging 
news for me, doctor, what a blessing I’ll consider 
it!” 

“Ah, you may make certain, my dear,” said 
her aunt, “the new verdict will not materially 
differ from the old one.” 

And yet here Mrs. Thirlwall proved wrong. 
Moncrieffe was with her for a good hour, and 
the scientific search that he made was not only 
one of great accuracy, but based upon advanced 


78 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


methods of diagnosis. When at last the exiled 
Eloise was readmitted into the chamber, she 
gave a glad little cry on quickly scanning Mrs. 
Thirl wall’s face. 

“The new verdict does differ from the old 
one!” she exulted. And then, with her looks 
dancing toward Moncrieffe: “Oh, I felt sure 
you’d not have so severe a one!” 

“You treat me as if I manufactured profes- 
sional opinions rather than deduced them,” said 
Moncrieffe, dryly. 

“I know, I know!” she acceded. “Am I not 
idiotic?” And for a moment she hid her head 
on her aunt’s shoulder. 

Mrs. Thirl wall stroked her chestnut hair. 
“I’m afraid, my dear, that you will not find 
the verdict so remarkably merciful, after all, ’ ’ 
she said. 

“It’s this,” broke in Moncrieffe, gently la- 
conic, with his gaze full on Eloise’s lifting face. 
“Your aunt can live on in fair health for years 
yet, by keeping her days quiet days, unworried, 
unexcited.” 

“And that is so hard to do in this particular 
planet,” sighed Mrs. Thirlwall, with the sort of 
under- smile that accompanied nearly all her 
words. “Why don’t you doctors have asteroids 
to which you can send your patients? That 
would be the right ‘change of air’ for them — an 
entire escape from earth and her indigenous 
troubles.” 

“It might be goingfurther and faring worse, ” 
said Moncrieffe. “Who knows that outrageous 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


79 


fortune doesn’t rear its crest quite as high on 
Saturn and Venus?” 

“Yes,” said Mrs. Thirl wall; “and they’ve 
probably each a Shakespeare to call it poetic 
names.” 

“But you haven’t finished your verdict, doc- 
tor,” reminded Eloise. 

“I find,” Moncrieffe resumed, “no trace of 
valvular disease. I can see why it was inferred, 
however.” He then spoke on, quite at length 
and with much fluency though not a hint either 
of undue self-assertion or medical pedantry. 
“Finally,” he affirmed, “I reach what seems to 
me a logical conclusion. The organ may be 
appreciably strengthened by treatment, and a 
slight yet serious tendency to paralysis retarded 
if never actually cured. But as I have told your 
aunt, Miss Thirlwall, she should consent to a 
certain prescribed regimen — ” 

“Oh, I’ll make her consent!” interjected 
Eloise ardently. “Even if it’s bread and water, 
doctor, I’ll promise you that her shrieks of hunger 
will find me savagely callous!” 

The morning was breezy and sunny, and the 
lawns of Greendingle were a living loveliness of 
shade and shine as Moncrieffe and Eloise came 
out on the piazza together. They had left Mrs. 
Thirlwall upstairs, and her niece was declaring 
with earnest emphasis that she would prove the 
most watchful of nurses. But suddenly her 
tones faltered a little, and she broke away from 
her protestations by rather insecurely murmur- 
ing: 


80 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


4 ‘Oh, doctor, you must have thought me al- 
most demented yesterday!- Did you not?” 

“Naturally you had been a good deal upset.” 

She nodded quickly. “Aunt Emily is my 
mainstay — my refuge— apart from the great per- 
sonal love I feel for her.” Here the girl’s face 
hardened, though not in the least austerely. “I 
suppose you know what I am. You must know, 
by this time, even if you hadn’t heard before. I 
feel as if a kind of searching white light were 
thrown on me all the while, in this gossiping, 
provincial place. It isn’t mere egotism, and it 
isn’t morbid fret. It’s just a consciousness of 
the harsh and heartless truth.” 

“Have you found it so harsh and heartless, 
then?” he said. This questioning answer seemed 
to him a happier and kindlier way of telling her 
that he had learned what she thus frankly as- 
sumed him to have learned. 

She pressed her lips together with a moment- 
ary effect of pain. “You do know, then! I 
thought so. . . If anything befell poor Aunt Em- 
ily I would be absolutely homeless and helpless. 
Dunstan Thirlwall would probably at once sepa- 
rate me from Anita. He would, I fear, place 
her in some asylum, some ‘home.’ All this land 
would go to him. Aunt Emily has nothing but 
a life-interest in it, and the whole family income 
is derived from it. He would advise me to get 
a place as governess, or nursery-maid, or some- 
thing of that sort. He is perfectly inflexible — 
and besides, I am quite as much so in my way. 
I would never beg his clemency, and even if he 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


81 


offered me any, feeling toward me in the hostile, 
intolerant spirit that he does, I would gather up 
defiant bravery enough to answer him in very 
independent terms.” 

Moncrieffe scarcely knew what response to 
frame. Standing here in the cool, shaded door- 
way, he heard the jocund trebles of birds ringing 
from knoll and copse. The sun, transiently 
muffled in a cloud whose flocculence it drenched 
with pearly light, blackened by this fleeting re- 
tirement the tracts of delicious shadow on the 
short- shorn verdure of the aftermath. Such 
brief and delicate eclipses make the tenderest 
poetry of a midsummer day, turning the disc of 
the roadside daisy more saliently white and lur- 
ing from arches of distant horizons a new azure 
sparkle, a new descendant grace. 

As he looked steadily into the sincere and wo- 
manly face of this girl who had just addressed 
him with so sorrowful a candor, it seemed as if 
he had known her for months rather than hours. 
He felt his heart pulsate toward her with a 
strange and vital fervor. Her untrammeled re- 
cital of personalities no longer partook of the 
least extraordinary tinge. He realized that in 
the loneliness and isolation of her dread this 
longing for human sympathy had wakened an 
irresistible impulse of confidence. 

He put forth his hand and let it rest upon her 
own. She started a little, but did not resist the 
pressure of his fingers, large, virile and smooth. 
She looked into his eyes and read there, no doubt, 
both his admiration and his pity. 


82 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“It’s a bitter fate,” he said, low of voice. 
“But you must not despair. I know you will 
not, for I read in your face that you are not of 
the despairing kind. . . Do I not surmise even 
more than that?” he went softly on. 

“What?” she breathed, with a vaguely 
alarmed glance at him, withdrawing her hand. 


VII. 

“Only this,” he said, with the faintest of 
reassuring laughs, pleased more than he knew 
by the maidenly dignity of her sudden little sen- 
sitive flurry. “You’ve somehow grown rather 
deeply to trust (am I not right?) my possible 
power to perpetuate your aunt’s threatened life?” 

“Yes — you’re right. I have grown to trust 
you like that!” 

“And if her life were prolonged — say for five, 
six, eight years? Would that change your future 
prospects? Would it take from you the sort of 
terror that now hangs over all your to-morrows ? ’ ’ 

“The loss would still be severe — the terror, as 
you name it, might by then have vanished. 
Aunt is land-poor now ; but if the railroad peo- 
ple who talk of buying up acres of her property 
should decide on such purchase, her income 
would be ten times what it now is, and from 
that income (she could not touch the principal, 
of course) I am certain that a generous provision 
would be made for me. It would not be a for- 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


83 


tune, but it would be a challenge to actual 
want.” 

“I understand.” As he spoke he remembered 
certain words of Dunstan’s on the previous even- 
ing. “And this purchase would involve the de- 
struction of a graveyard, would it not?” 

“Have you heard of that?” she said, quickl}' 
and with some surprise. “Yes; but that is an 
affair which does not concern us. We have no 
right or title to that piece of property. The vil- 
lage authorities would, I believe, cede part of 
the graveyard. They have already shown their 
willingness to do so. I don’t think it has been 
decided how much they will cede. But dese- 
crating even the oldest graves in that way,” she 
added, with a faint shudder, “seems to me so 
horrible! Does it not seem so to you?” 

Moncrieffe asked himself, when he had jumped 
into his waiting wagon and driven away, why 
he had chosen at all to touch upon that irrelevant 
theme of the graveyard’s possible violation. He 
concluded that his having done so had sprung 
from a desire to witness in Eloise’s face and 
manner just the little humane and tender avowal 
which she had confirmed his expectation of her 
by sweetly revealing. 

After two or three fresh meetings he began to 
feel that they had grown really intimate. Hav- 
ing a good deal more leisure than he desired, 
lingering little chats with Eloise would strike 
him as a very pleasant way to employ it. 

“Your aunt is doing splendidly,” he said, one 
morning. “I don’t believe her heart has been 


84 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


as strong and regular in its beatings for five or 
six years.” 

“And it’s all just because of your treatment?” 
she said, in tones that he somehow found tan- 
talizingly nondescript. 

“There’s honorable recognition !” he pretended 
to grumble. “Oh, no; I had better be truthful 
and admit that the former treatment of old Dr. 
Bascomb is now telling upon her system.” 

The girl laughed at his irony. “And is the 
course you have taken with Aunt Emily quite 
scientifically new?” 

“Certain doctors would call it so. But we 
younger ones think nothing new that was not 
discovered yesterday.” 

“And science is always being blessed with a 
fruitful yesterday?” 

“It would almost seem as if she truly were.” 

“Her progress has been so mighty, of late, has 
it not? No wonder that even so warm and wide- 
sighted a spirit as Aunt Emily’s has been caught 
in the cold, glittering snare of its denials and 
doubts.” 

“You call them a snare, then?” he quickly 
asked. 

“Not in contempt. But I am a believer, you 
know.” She said this with a defiant demureness 
that put twinkles into his eyes. 

“You speak as if I did not know, and were 
going to give you a violent scolding for being 
one. That shows what a queer infidel age we’re 
living in.” 

“Oh, people may be as ardent infidels as they 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


85 


please,” she said, with a seriousness that wore 
a sheath of lightness; “but I shall always keep 
my faith, for what seems to me a momentous 
reason.” 

“Reason and faith are generally supposed to 
be the two poles,” he answered. 

“Yes. But I don’t believe blindly,” she pro- 
tested. “I can’t think that Ido. We human 
creatures are finite, and nature is infinite — or at 
least is relatively so to us. What is the conse- 
quence? A mystery. That mystery I call God, 
and I endow it with every loving and protective 
quality. When they ask me what love and pro- 
tection I see in certain dreadful ills that occur 
to us all, I answer that there couldn’t be any 
mystery if I did see. And I think I’m proof 
even against the logicians, in this posture, for 
if I’ve started with the idea of God being a mys- 
tery to us mortals, why isn’t it sound sense 
enough to assume that He should accomplish all 
His good in ways whose workings are shadowy 
and occult?” 

Her words vibrated with conviction and sin- 
cerity, yet they carried no self-secure positive- 
ness. They even had a timid ring, as though 
underswept by misgiving that they might too 
roughly collide with opposite views and conclu- 
sions in her hearer. 

Moncrieffe felt the delightful spell of her eager- 
ness in waiting for his reply before it came ; and 
perhaps he delayed it a little that he might bet- 
ter enjoy the richly human picture of her creased 
brows, interrogative eyes and parted lips. 


86 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


‘ ‘You make your veneration a sort of blankly 
receptive vagueness/’ he said, “and then you 
paint upon it all kinds of charming pictorial 
hopes. I don’t see why the attitude isn’t a very 
comfortable one, if it can only be preserved.” 

“Preserved?” she echoed. “You mean that 
I’m young and that bitter coming experiences 
may destroy it. But you forget that I have 
suffered — perhaps more than most girls of my 
age and surroundings.” 

“Yes,” he replied, “you have surely suffered. 
I grant that. ’ ’ 

“And it has never changed me!” she hurried. 
“No, nor would any future suffering change me! 
I am confident of a living God whose other name 
is love ! I shall be confident of it till I die, even 
if I die in misery both of mind and body!” 

“I see,” he said, shortly yet not coldly. 
“That is what we call temperament.” 

“Yes. It is my temperament to believe — to 
take the Divine Message for granted, no matter 
how obscurely it may be conveyed. . . And 
you,” she broke off, with the new personal query 
giving to her manner a faint, wistful disarray. 
“Are you quite at odds with me in my opti- 
mism?” 

“I’m at odds with life, I think,” he said. 

“With life? Oh, everybody who thinks at 
all is that.” 

“But there are varying shades of antagonism. 
I suspect that mine is gloomier than yours.” 

“Gloomier? Misanthropically?” 

“Oh, no. It’s a shallow hate, that hate of 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


87 


one’s fellows. Between one’s self and them there 
should be only a give-and-take of pity.” 

“Then you meant — ?” she said, very interest- 
edly. 

“That there’s so much we can’t do here and 
can’t be here, in spite of our best efforts.” He 
spoke on, for quite a while, of his friend, Mag- 
nus Whitewright, while the sympathetic changes 
in her watchful face gave him a poetic fancy of 
how summer winds will crisp or darken the silky 
tide of a woodland pool. “But poor Magnus,” 
he at length broke off, “is handicapped in a 
physical way. Destiny pushes him to the wall 
with a kind of insolent brutality. Its assaults 
are often far subtler than that. The element of 
so-called chance comes in, and picks off some of 
your best energies like the rifle-balls of an am- 
buscaded guerilla. For my own part, I feel this 
vigilant menace more keenly the longer that I 
live. A man wants to do something, to become 
something, before he dies — to fulfill himself spir- 
itually, morally, even mundanely. There are 
so many little imps of calamity that lurk along 
the roadside of his career, ready to wreak their 
maiming spite upon him. We applaud success 
in the world. Do we ever realize how mere luck, 
in such cases, has been able, as Shakespeare 
pithily put it, to ‘shackle accident’? I confess,” 
he ended, with a deprecating smile, “that my 
emotions in this regard have been more of a pre- 
sentiment than a heart-burning.” 

“Then why borrow trouble?” she asked, with 
a sudden practical turn that plucked from him a 


88 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


broad, amused smile. “As long as your road is 
smooth, why anticipate in it ruts and hillocks?” 

“Sensible counsel,” he approved, but so un- 
spontaneously that she struck in, with almost 
frowning reprimand : 

“It’s not for a man of your native force to 
weaken it by imagining the attacks of foes who 
haven’t yet given a single hostile sign.” 

“Ah, well and good,” he granted, flattered by 
her pleasant touch of fierceness. “But if one 
feels the foes are there, torpid unconcern of them 
is a hard mood to cultivate. . 

Still, he reflected afterward how wholesome 
was her opposition to his disbelief in the freedom 
of the human will to hew for itself a secure and 
unperilous pathway. He loved this new asso- 
ciation with the intrinsic sturdiness and good- 
cheer of her character. It was a relief to be 
himself with her, even though a certain friendly 
wrangling would sometimes bemist if not cloud 
the air of their intercourse. With poor White- 
wright he had always preserved a kind of men- 
tal masquerade, and had never more than faintly 
averred his own solemn inward surety that to 
every living man there was vouchsafed just so 
much opportunity, and no more, of exploiting 
his honorable ambitions, outside of a tyrannic, 
impalpable, insidious agency, a veritable power 
of the air, that waited to thwart and defeat 
him. 

And what were Moncrieffe’s ambitions? Hon- 
orable they surely were, and hence, in their gen- 
eral worldly definition, unselfish. Here and 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


89 


now, at the outset of his professional life, he de- 
sired distinction and wealth. He was ready to 
work strenuously for both, and he had placed 
the anticipated winning of neither upon any ro- 
mantically lofty height. But in so strongly hint- 
ing to Eloise Thirl wall that he dreaded the latent 
enmity of circumstance, he had expressed a half- 
slumbering alarm which through all his recent 
years of early manhood had slowly strengthened 
within his thought. He had so far philosophized 
his own daily existence as to see with what ran- 
dom turmoil the slings and arrows that forever 
wound us come pattering about our ears. Once, 
in a state of nervous dismay (perhaps largely 
wrought by Whitewright’s untoward collapse), 
he had even said to himself that for any man to 
try and wring out of life a moderate amount of 
profit and victory, was a risk not only parallel 
with that of the soldier on the ordinary battle- 
field, but with that of the soldier in a hot bullet- 
raining siege. “Thousands are falling every 
day,” he mused, “and the pathos of it is that 
their bravery counts no better than if it were 
cowardice. Matthew Arnold spoke of some 
power not ourselves that makes for righteous- 
ness. He might also have assumed there’s a 
power not ourselves that makes for disaster.” 

Moncrieffe’s little talks with Eloise caused him 
to wonder if the near-coming dinner of Mrs. 
Cassilis would give him anything so diverting 
and stimulant. He had sharp doubts on this 
point, and told Whitewright, one morning, that 
he fancied he had been brought quite abruptly 


90 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


within the fragrance of the fine flower of intel- 
lectual River view society. 

“As if there were any intellectual Riverview 
society!” scoffed Whitewright. “It’s a collec- 
tion of rather lazy and dull plutocrats. Of course 
I’m supposed to know nothing about it — I, the 
son of a poor village apothecary. But father, 
who had the self-education that is peculiarly 
American, proved a very shrewd looker-on in 
Vienna. His observations were a part of my 
youthful impressions, and I’ve never had the 
least reason for reversing their testimony.” 

“You might have now, if you’d practically 
try, Magnus.” 

“I?” He laughed, and the laugh ended in a 
little hacking cough which Moncrieffe hated ; it 
kept intruding such a gloomy omen into his hope 
of his friend’s bettered health. “They’d no more 
allow me to put my feet under their patrician 
mahoganies than if I were one of their lackeys. 
It might have been different, with my college 
training and all that, if I hadn’t gone into the 
old paternal little retail shop. But now , my 
boy! Why, it’s a question whether the mere fact 
of our living together may not — ” 

“Hush, Magnus!” cried Moncrieffe. “If I 
thought such a thing I’d write to those Cassilises 
declining their dinner, without even the menda- 
cious politeness of inventing a sore throat or a 
touch of rheumatism.” 

White wright looked at him with a kind of gay 
ferocity. “You’d do nothing of jhe sort, Basil. 
I’d never hear of it for a second.” Then his 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


91 


faded face became all an eager fondness. “I’m 
selfish about your success, my boy ; I shall reap 
a vicarious triumph from it.” He put his head 
on one side, in an access of that incongruous 
pleasantry which clung so often about his ref- 
erences to death, yet somehow never with fhe 
least flippant import. “If you allow me to shuffle 
off this mortal coil without a full conviction that 
you’re on the highroad to an excellent practice, 
I shall die penetrated with the intention of mak- 
ing to you on the subject all sorts of blood-curd- 
ling post-mortem inquiries.” 

“Please hush, Magnus,” pleaded his friend. 
“Even in jest — ” 

“Bah, Basil, it isn’t in jest at all. It’s in 
dead — or, I should say, dying — earnest. . . As 
for your marriage, ah, what a pity such a dear 
girl as Eloise Thirlwall couldn’t be magically 
translated into the environments of Elma Blag- 
don, and she put with a like convenient necro- 
mancy into the latter’s place!” 

Moncrieffe first showed amazement, and then 
shrugged it away, with an indulgent yawn. 

“Why don’t you talk,” he said, a little sul- 
lenly, “of my marrying the Bartholdi Statue?” 

“She wouldn’t be at all a good match,” ban- 
tered White wright. “She has a fine, command- 
ing position, I grant, but her parentage is for- 
eign, and I insist on the future Mrs. Moncrieffe 
being a native-born American.” Then, while 
they interchanged a laugh at the quaintness of 
this nonsense, he went on, with altered tones: 


92 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“Poor Eloise Thirl wall, for that matter, has no 
parentage at all. ’ ’ 

Moncrieffe felt himself flush. “If there were 
any question of matrimony,” he broke out, “I’d 
despise myself for remembering it of her!” 

Whitewright started at his fervor. “God 
bless you, Basil, of course you would ! You’re 
one of the few men who’d be manly enough to 
forget it!” 


VIII. 

Though Moncrieffe had his doubts concerning 
just what degree of enjoyment he should gain 
from Mrs. Cassilis’s coming dinner, to Elma 
Blagdon the prospect of appearing there was 
pleasant in the extreme. 

“I think, ” she ruminated aloud, in her father’s 
presence, one morning, “that I’ll wear my light- 
green gown with the big puffed sleeves, and my 
collar of pearls. Those ought to make me look 
as smart as about anything else I could get my- 
self up in.” 

“And ’fore an hour, El, you’ll have changed 
your mind,” said Mr. Blagdon. 

“Well,” she pouted, “suppose I do. There’s 
such a lot of new gowns that I haven’t worn this 
summer. ’ ’ 

“You wouldn’t go anywheres, El. I been 
ready ever since June, but you’ve kept putting 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


93 


me off. I was for Saratoga and the Lakes and 
the Thousand Islans, winding up at Nooport.” 

4 ‘Newport,” said Elma, with a mock sigh and 
a theatric rolling glance toward him. “ You at 
Newport, papa!” 

“Do you mean I ain’t fit to be seen there?” 
said the old man, reddening. 

She slipped to his side and began to smooth 
with both hands his whitish, glistening hair. 
“Oh, no, dear. But you’d hate it, and you 
wouldn’t know a soul, and all that. Some of 
these days we’ll take a cottage there for the 
season. That will be different.” 

“You’ll talk about it, El, and that’s all you 
will do. It don’t seem right a girl o’ your looks 
and brains should poke off in one place forever.” 

“I’m sure this is a very nice place,” said 
Elma, letting one hand rest on his shoulder as 
she turned and looked through the low, broad 
window. Terraces that were ablaze with bloom 
sloped majestically down to dark- green masses of 
trees. Beyond swept the Hudson, magnificent 
in its morning scintillance, with that steadfast 
effect of march, of progress, which all great 
rivers convey. The house itself was a stately 
affair in stone, with more turrets and general 
casteilation than some critics thought tasteful 
for its size, though indeed it was very large 
when one considered that only two people, apart 
from the servants, occupied its roomy interior. 

“Oh, it’s nice enough,” said Elma’s father, 
with sudden stout boastfulness. “I guess there 
ain’t a house in Riverview that beats it, by and 


94 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


large. It cost me pretty near six hundred thou- 
sand to build, and it costs me, to keep it up, 
pretty near — ” 

“That will do, papa.” 

He instantly paid deference to the brisk com- 
mand, which he would perhaps have either dis- 
regarded or resented from the lips of any other 
living mortal. 

“But it’s hot here, it’s awful hot all through 
the summer,” he went on, with a meekness the 
more surprising because at once so prompt and 
so conciliatory. “I never reckoned on the heat 
o’ the Hudson till I’d got settled right ’longside 
of it like this. It ain’t any place to stay at 
through July and August. I s’ pose I wouldn’t 
feel the heat so, El, if I had my business to ’tend 
to. But you’ve made me give all that the grand 
bounce, and here I am, nosing about, with noth- 
ing on earth to do.” 

“Never mind; we’ll rent a house in town next 
October— or buy one.” 

“That’s what you said last summer, El,” he 
almost whimpered. “But when the time come 
you stuck here straight on till January, and then 
I had just to drag you to Floridy.” 

Elma was looking steadily down at the radiant 
river, bastioned at its further bank by the long 
clean-cut cliff of the Palisades, above whose 
gray-green glimmer floated a few delicate clouds, 
in their lazy, rounded gauze. 

“You’ve lots to occupy you, papa,” she said, 
absently. “You’ve the gardens and stables 
and — ” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


95 


“Oh, let up on them , El. I pay first-class 
prices for first-class hands, and everything goes 
on as if it didn’t want me and would kind o’ 
snub me for interfering in it. The overseers 
don’t need to be overseen, and all I’ve got to do 
is to draw checks. That might be exciting ex- 
ercise if there wasn’t so much ready cash always 
waiting to draw ’em on. But just signing your 
name to ’em and running over accounts once a 
week — why, it’s reg’lar baby-play to an old busi- 
ness chap like me. Still, you would have me 
quit selling my medicines, and now I ain’t got a 
thing to keep my mind occupied. I get through 
the morning papers ’fore you’re out o’ your bed, 
for I never could sleep later than ha ’-past seven; 
and you know how little I care for carriage- 
riding; and you won’t let me have a fast trotter 
and a light wagon, like I used to have in the 
city, when your mother was alive and you was 
a tot of a girl, and — ” 

Elma turned from the window, now, and 
moved to a piano which stood open scarcely a 
yard from her father’s elbow. She seated her- 
self before it, and sent forth from its keys a 
facile flow of notes. She seemed to be timing 
her words to them as she said : 

“You told me, weeks ago, that you’d read up 
on English history. You confessed to me that 
you didn’t know William the Conqueror from 
William of Orange, or Queen Elizabeth from 
Queen Anne. I’ve had a really splendid library 
collected and brought here— not many rare edi- 
tions, but a great many good and valuable ones 


96 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


— and the room itself, as everybody who’s seen 
it admits, is a perfect dream of beauty and com- 
fort. But though you promised me you’d read 
there at least two hours a day, I doubt if you’ve 
entered the room for a week.” 

“It hurts my eyes to read anything but the 
papers, El. Besides, I can’t remember what I 
do read. I’m somehow too old to tackle the 
kings and queens o’ England. I get ’em so 
mixed up that there ain’t any use trying to keep 
their politics and their marriages and their 
births and their deaths and their battles and 
their general goings-on sep’rated one from 
t’other.” 

Elma continued playing, with a short, exas- 
perated toss of her head, and presently Mr. 
Blagdon resumed : 

“I’d take a heap o’ pleasure hearing you at the 
pianner if you’ll only play a real tune. But half 
the time you don’t; you just make it up out o’ 
your head like that, and there ain’t a bit o’ fun 
in it at all.” 

“Make it up out of my head!” smiled Elma. 
“Oh, papa, what I’ve just strummed so badly is 
by a composer named Schumann, one of the 
truest geniuses that ever lived!” . . 

She suddenly struck two or three sonorous 
chords, and then dashed into a jingling bit of 
musical rowdyism from some recent operetta. 

“That’s it!” exclaimed her father, as he 
leaned back in his chair with a relishing chuckle. 
“Splendid! Goon!” 

Elma did go on, quite riotously, for several 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


97 


minutes. Then she began to play something 
different though equally trashy, in much slower 
tempo , speaking, at the same time, with little 
measured noddings of the head. 

“I’m glad, papa, you can take pleasure in 
such rubbish. . . And by the way, if Dr. Mon- 
crieffe does, I shall be furious about it.” 

“Dr. Moncrieffe again, El! I d’ clare if you 
don’t behave just dead gone about that feller! 
I don’t see what you saiv. He looked to me 
like a nice, plain young man, with nothing to 
him anyways out o’ the common.” 

“He’s just too perfectly adorable for any- 
thing,” said Elma, still playing. “I can hardly 
wait for the Cassilises’ dinner.” 

“Oh, that’s the way you talk now! Prett}^ 
soon it’ll be a very different story.” 

“No, it will notr 

* ‘ There was that young chap at Saratogy. You 
made me work things round so that I got inter- 
dooced to him and then interdooced him to you. 
But you’d no sooner said ten words to him than 
you give him the cold shoulder and flounced off, 
leaving me and him staring at one another on 
the Clarendon Hotel piazzy.” 

“I remember. He looked quite nice at a dis- 
tance. But when he was nearer I found that 
he had untidy nails, and that his ears stuck out 
too much, and that he talked through his nose, 
and — oh, I’ve forgotten what else. He was hor- 
rid, and I simply had to getaway from him.” 

“I could name others you’ve gone on about in 
just the same way, El, and then dropped like hot 


98 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


potaters. This Dunstan Thirl wall, he ’pears to 
be treated better than any of ’em for a steady 
spell o’ time.” 

Elma stopped playing and wheeled round on 
the piano-stool so that her eyes and her father’s 
directly met. 

“I’ve done with Dunstan Thirlwall, papa.” 

“Oh; you have!” 

“Yes. He’s nice; he’s a gentleman in out- 
ward form, and all that. I like to talk to him ; 
I like . . .” 

“His finger-nails, hey? And the shapes of 
his ears?” 

Elma’s brows gloomed, and then a smile 
flashed from her lips. “Don’t be tiresome, now ! 
What I mean is this : Dunstan Thirlwall is the 
embodiment of everything outwardly cultivated. 
But he’s inwardly cold and almost unhuman. 
I’ll never marry him, and I think he under- 
stands it at last. That’s why he’s gone to New- 
port. So far as Fm concerned he can stay there 
forever!” 

“Ain’t he one o’ the nabobs, El? Ain’t he in 
the Six Hundred, and all that?” 

“You never ivill remember, papa, that it’s the 
Four Hundred. Yes, he is. But I don’t care. 
I wouldn’t marry him on that account. I’d 
never marry him on any.” 

“I s’ pose he’s asked you half a dozen times or 
so, ain’t he?” 

“Never mind how many times.” She ab- 
ruptly darted from the piano-stool, and made a 
preposterous burlesque curtsey. “What would 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


99 


yon say if I came to you and wanted you to let 
me marry a poor village doctor, who probably 
hasn’t as many thousands as you have millions?” 

“Go along,” said her father, flushing with 
diversion at her “capers,” as he would have 
called them. The instant she gave the faintest 
hint of mirthful vivacity he was intoxicated with 
amusement. He thought her the most beautiful, 
fascinating and graceful girl in the whole world. 
Passionate paternity was developed in him to a 
degree that verged upon the most reckless fanati- 
cism, if indeed it did not pass that limit. 

“I’d just like to see any poverty-struck, for- 
tune-hunting feller like that, ” he continued, with 
his face wrinkled into a sort of painful geniality, 
“come fooling round you. I’d tell him, quick 
as wink, that he’d better. . .” 

But here the words faltered into silence, for 
there was something in Elma’s air that implied 
displeasure, not to say vexation. And to dis- 
please or vex his worshiped child was with Mr. 
Abijah Blagdon like letting flame lick his flesh. 
He lived only to propitiate and humor and be 
governed by her. Utterly her captive, he re- 
joiced in his slavery. The yoke that was worn 
so willingly he would not have exchanged for any 
sovereignty earth might bestow. 

Elma perfectly understood this. She was fond 
of her father, but she had no ardent love for 
him. Egotism and caprice were the two ruling 
factors in her nature. She was intelligent, in a 
way thoughtful, and in a way not educated ill. 
But to state that indulgence had not spoiled her 


100 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


would be to state that fire does not burn. Beyond 
doubt she had her moods of goodness ; but these 
were opposed by selfishness, arrogance, cruelty, 
and an almost incalculable caprice. One of the 
chief reasons why she remained so permanently 
at River view was a dread of being treated as 
less important elsewhere. She knew very well 
that before she could hold her own socially in 
any other place, a certain number of prelimi- 
nary reverences must be paid. This prospect 
did not at all please her. At River view the mag- 
nificent mansion and its troops of underlings had 
done their distinct work; everybody had called 
long ago ; it was a small world but a very dap- 
per and opulent one, nevertheless ; being a set- 
tled somebody in it was better than struggling 
frantically forth from nobodyism somewhere 
else. 

But Elma had another reason for biding in 
this noble home on the Hudson, whose designing 
and general structure she herself had imperiously 
chosen and supervised, and to which she had 
given the name of The Terraces. “I like a 
sensible, appropriate name,” she had declared. 
“Half the others here are named with a most 
idiotic sentimentality. We’ll show them that 
we’ve a dignified disdain for their ‘Lawncliffs’ 
and their ‘Locustcrofts’ and their 4 Cedar wolds.’ ” 
Her pride resented the ridicule with which soci- 
ety would be sure to greet the presence of her 
father. It might be covert ridicule, but they 
could not conceal it from her detection ; its mere 
entity would mean disclosure to her sensitive 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


101 


surveillance. Here people had got used to him, 
and she had got used to going about with him. 
At first he had caused her pangs of acute tor- 
ment, but now she felt that the worst was over, 
apart from proudly realizing that her father’s 
very large wealth lifted him into envied emi- 
nence, even here amid these close-clustering 
plutocrats. But out in the big “open” it would 
be odious enough. Of course she well knew that 
they would accept herself and her parent most 
meekly in the end. But she rebelled against any 
term of probation whatever. It stung her pride 
to think of waiting in the antechamber of aris- 
tocracy till it deigned to receive her elsewhere. 
She would prefer to that the swift and direct 
course of a politic marriage. 

But for a good while past she had had a sort 
of premonition that she would be captured by a 
passion and yield herself to it in an ecstasy of 
surrender. Her father used to jest at her muta- 
ble whims, and tell her she would die a spinster ; 
it seemed to him an immense joke to say that 
she would die a spinster, she whom he held 
suited in every way to be the bride of a royal 
prince, and one not so very far from the throne, 
either. But Elma had grown to believe that her 
very fastidiousness was the prelude of a great 
coming infatuation. She would sometimes feel 
puzzled by herself, so irreconcilable seemed her 
susceptibilities and her disapprobations. 

The day of the Cassilis dinner was sultry and 
humid, with grumblings of thunder constantly 
emanant from a leaden west. Elma had a mor- 


102 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


bid horror of thunderstorms, and would have 
written her hostess at the eleventh hour, declin- 
ing to appear, if it had not been for her longing 
once more to see Moncrieffe. She adhered to 
the idea of her green gown and pearls, and 
looked strikingly well in them. All through the 
drive to the Cassilises she kept asking her father 
questions about the storm — whether or no he 
thought there was any chance of its bursting 
while they were at dinner, and whether the aug- 
mented mutters of thunder might not be a warn- 
ing for them to turnback and send Mrs. Cassilis 
an apologetic note. 

“Oh, I guess it’ll keep growling like this all 
night, and never do anything worse, ’ ’ her father 
consoled. . . When she spoke of turning back 
he broke into a sonorous giggle, and told her 
that he* guessed she wouldn’t miss the chance of 
meeting her new “fancy” for all the thunder- 
storms that the weather-prophets could invent. 

“If he shouldn’t be there after all,” said 
Elma, “I believe I’d get up some horrid sudden 
illness and go right straight home again.” 

“You couldn’t,” teased Blagdon, “for the car- 
riage would be gone. You’d have to stay on, 
El, and eat your dinner without him.” 

“I should be furious,” she retorted, as if to 
herself. “Mrs. Cassilis was particular to say, 
when she invited us, that the new doctor had 
agreed to come.” Here she looked petulantly at 
her father and snapped forth: “Papa, you know 
how I suffer in a thunderstorm, and you might 
have better taste than to try and increase my 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


103 


• nervousness. . . No” (as lie sought fondlingly 
to take her hand); “I think you’ve behaved in 
the most cruel way!” She tightly folded both 
hands in her lap, but he leaned his head down 
and tore them apart with gentle force, covering 
one of them with kisses. Till they reached the 
Cassilis residence he kept murmuring all sorts 
of consolatory things, some of them phrased in 
the very language that he had used to her years 
ago when she was a little girl. She sat with her 
head fallen backward on the cushions of the 
carriage, making no reply whatever, the large 
white lids of her large eyes listlessly drooped, 
and that look which we have already heard 
called nun-like reigning sedately on her palish, 
narrowish, pretty face. 

When they reached the Cassilis gateways a 
few large drops of rain were falling. But the 
drive to the house was not long, and the electric 
lights which flooded its interior gave it a cheer- 
ful look after the sullen dimness outside. They 
were late as they entered the beautiful white- 
and-gold drawing-room. Elma was always late 
whenever she went anywhere in Riverview, and 
the assembled company, fourteen in all, had 
made this failing the subject of a rather general 
comment. She floated into the room to be 
greeted by a little ripple of amused laughter, her 
father following somewhat ponderously in her 
wake. She looked very graceful and distin- 
guished as she crossed the threshold and reached 
out to Mrs. Cassilis one slender, long-gloved 
hand. Quick as a flash of the lightning she was 


104 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


so afraid of, she had observed that Moncrieffe 
was among the company. This pleased her, and 
the pleasure showed itself at once in her manner, 
though she did not deign to give him the faintest 
glance of welcome. 

She deigned, for that matter, to heed nobody 
present except her hostess, dropping into a chair 
with a sort of languid impertinence while her 
father went about, shaking hands here and there 
in cordial expansiveness. Everybody, however, 
was looking solely at her. In Riverview at least 
she was an important person. Some of the 
neighbors heartily disliked her, but no one ever 
treated her with inattention. 

“I do so hope we’re not going to have an aw- 
ful storm!” she cried. “I’m the most terrible 
coward about thunder and lightning. Do you 
know, we were on the point of driving home 
again? If it’s very bad I shall certainly get 
under the table.” 

This caused a general laugh, and just then 
dinner was announced. A Mr. Bedchambers 
gave Elma his arm, and she almost scowled in 
his face. She did not hate the gentleman ; he 
usually diverted her with his droll fear of adding 
a single pound to his puffy if not obese person. 
But now a dagger of disappointment pierced her 
breast. Dr. Monerieffe was going to take in 
somebody else, and they might be placed abys- 
mally apart. A feline rage at Mrs. Cassilis beset 
Elma ; she would have liked to deal that lady a 
disfiguring scratch. 

“So mean of her — so miserably mean!” she 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


105 


almost said aloud. Yet for her life she could not 
have told why she denounced it as mean. Mrs. 
Cassilis had not told her that she and Mon- 
crieffe should be companioned during the dinner. 
“Of course she’s going to keep him to herself,” 
ran on Elma’s angry thoughts, forgetful of her 
hostess’s notorious husband- worship. “I’d no 
idea he was so handsome. His evening-dress 
brings him out so.” (She had taken in every 
detail of both his countenance and attire though 
she had hardly seemed to give him a glance.) 
“He looks perfectly angelic. Perhaps he may 
be on my other side. If not I shall never forgive 
Caroline Cassilis — never /” 


IX. 

Moncrieffe was, as it proved, on her “other 
side,” and she felt like venting a delighted 
scream as this fact became known to her. 
The long table was a lovely fantasy of silver 
and candle-light and flowers, isled in the soft 
gloom of an immense low-ceiled dining-room. 

Elma chose to address herself to Mr. Bell- 
chambers. Her action in thus at first ignoring 
Moncrieffe and speaking to a person who could 
never more than meagerly interest her, was way- 
ward, complex, epicurean, characteristic. 

“Oh, dear, what a charming house this is! It 
makes me as jealous, every time I come here!” 


106 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 

‘‘Why should you, of all people, feel so, ” 
said Mr. Bellchambers, “with that splendid 
stone castle of your father’s down by the 
river?” 

“Oh, this monstrous chalet is so much airier 
and slenderer and more delicate.” 

“ You oughtn’t to like airy and slender and 
delicate things,” sighed Mr. Bellchambers. 
“ You’re all that yourself. I only wish — ” 

And then he paused, while Elma gave one of 
her high laughs. 

“Dear, dear! Are you still so afraid of get- 
ting stouter?” 

“Afraid?” he shuddered. “That’s no word 
for it. I lie awake nights thinking about it. 
When I gain a pound of flesh I reverse the usual 
form of speech and call it ‘losing.’ Last month 
I ‘lost’ six pounds. How on earth it happened 
I can’t conceive.” 

“Perhaps,” Elma suggested, “you ate a crumb 
of bread inadvertently. Didn’t you tell me bread 
was fearfully fattening?” 

“Yes, fearfully. I confine myself strictly to 
meat, eggs and green vegetables. I never drink 
a drop of any liquid with my meals. And yet 
I’ve ‘lost’ that amount of flesh. It’s agonizing.” 

“But you’re well?— you’re not in the least 
ill?” said Elma, with jollity. It seemed so 
much easier to let herself be amused by Mr. 
Bellchambers, now that she knew Moncrieffe 
could be turned to and talked with at a mo- 
ment’s notice. 

“Well? 111? Oh, it’s not at all a question 


A MARTYR OF DESTINE. 


107 


of health. It’s a question of peace and con- 
tentment.” 

“I see; yours are dependent upon the amount 
you weigh. Well, it isn’t everybody who can 
subject his happiness to such exact calculations.” 

“The process isn’t a successful one with me, 
I can assure you,” mourned Mr. Bellchambers, 
looking at a green-tinted glass of Rhenish wine 
longingly from between his pink, fat eyelids. 
“A new household trouble has lately risen up 
for me, owing altogether to my dietetic ten- 
dencies.” 

“A household trouble?” queried Elma. “Good 
Heavens, what are you saying? If ever there 
were two turtle-doves of matrimony they’ve al- 
ways seemed to me you and Mrs. Bellchambers.” 

“Don’t call us turtle-doves any longer, my dear 
Miss Blagdon. Call us Mr. and Mrs. Jack Spratt. 
Yes, I mean it. We strike each other as the 
most abnormally funny pair nowadays; we seem 
to have stepped right out from the weirdest ex- 
aggerations of Dickens. . .” 

Meanwhile Mrs. Bellchambers, whom Mon- 
crieffe had taken in, and who was a spare lady 
with that look of chronic alarm which belongs 
to a face having scant whitish eyebrows that 
slant upward at either temple, was forlornly 
saying in his ear: 

“Yes, Dr. Moncrieffe, I don’t mind telling 
you that I’m famished — literally famished. 
When I received Mrs. Cassilis’s invitation to 
dine, I hailed it with delight.” Then she ex- 
plained, with detailed solemnity, her husband’s 


108 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


avoidance of all fattening food. “We’re not 
rich; we’re not among the mighty land-holders 
of River view. We’ve only a small house over 
by the Van Boskirck road, and, as I never hesi- 
tate to tell anybody, we’ve a small income be- 
sides. And for this reason I find that I simply 
cannot afford to provide two separate tables 
every day, especially as our four children are 
now all getting on in years. But to eat only 
what Mr. Bellchambers wishes for himself will, 
before long, make us a family of skeletons. For 
Mr. Bellchambers (though he would haughtily 
deny it if he heard me) is a very large eater in- 
deed. That is why his unfattening food doesn’t 
reduce him ; he eats so much of it. Hence I am 
compelled to provide every day, for example, a 
really copious dinner, more or less like this: Ho 
soup— Mr. Bellchambers will not touch soup, 
thougn we are all very fond of it; a large fish, of 
some sort, though he alone really cares for fish; 
a joint of very lean meat, though the children 
and I often positively crave a slice of fat ; green 
vegetables, of which there are never very many, 
and sometimes no good ones at all. If the chil- 
dren and I have sweets for dessert we always 
eat them guiltily; for we’re aware, every one 
of us, that Mr. Bellchambers adores sugar in 
all possible forms. And it’s the same way with 
potatoes; 1 realize his sufferings, and abstain. 
Not that he isn’t often very self-sacrificing. 
Only the other day he said to me with tones 
full of quiet courage, ‘My dear Mary Ellen, 
have potatoes to-day, or if not those, have 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


109 


tapioca pudding.’ I assure you, doctor, the 
tears came into my eyes when he pronounced 
those words, ‘tapioca pudding’; for I know 
how he worships tapioca pudding. So I could 
not find it in my heart to inflict upon him two 
ordeals, like that, both in the same dinner. We 
had potatoes , and he behaved with beautiful 
self-control ; but I insisted that our dessert should 
be, as usual, a minus quantity.” 

Mon uieffe had by this time so far recovered 
from his surprise as to say venturingly: “But 
is not all this vexation avoidable by a little 
philosophy on Mr. Belle hambers’s part?” 

“You mean — eating everything and letting 
himself grow stout? Oh, mercy, he’d rather 
die! But I thought. Dr. Moncrieffe, that pos- 
sibly you might know of something he could 
take with his meals that would make his con- 
tinual dieting unnecessary. Oh, what a bless- 
ing such a drug would be in our little home! 
They talk of the gold-cure, doctor, for drunken- 
ness. How delightful to have something of the 
same sort for stoutness /” 

It was very long after this that a voice said 
softly, in what might be called Moncrieffe’s un- 
occupied ear : 

“How do you get on, doctor, with Mrs. Jack 
Spratt? I hope she’s more exciting than her 
liege lord here on my right?” 

Moncrieffe kept in bounds a betraying laugh. 
“She’s harrowed me with certain doleful confi- 
dences.” 

“Yes, really? Do tell me what they were. 


110 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


Then I’ll tell you some that Tve just received. 
Let’s make an exchange; it will be such fun!” 

Her manner had lost its novelty for him, and 
hence its shock as well. Her intimate and easy 
way of plunging into conversation affected him 
refreshingly. He felt toward her a swift at- 
traction, of the sort which she roused in nearly 
all men whom she chose to treat civilly. It so 
differed from the kind of charm another woman 
had but lately exerted and maintained over him, 
that he could not help making a rapid mental 
comparison of the two sensations, and not at all 
flatteringly to the last. 

He told her, in discreet semitone, about the 
sorrows of Mrs. Bellchambers, and with voice 
pitched less prudently she returned him an ac- 
count of those which the lady’s husband had 
imparted. She seemed to enjoy vastly their 
comparison of notes; it struck him admiringly, 
at times, that she bubbled over with a most bril- 
liant humor in her comments on this phenom- 
enal pair. But just as everything in her de- 
portment had previously imbued him with the 
idea of willfulness and despotism, so now did 
her sudden change of subject increase this im- 
pression. 

“I don’t want to talk about them any more,” 
she announced. “They’re caricatures, though 
more or less unconscious ones. And cari- 
catures are never particularly interesting to 
me; they’ve so little to do with the earnest 
and actual part of life. I think (don’t you?) 
that they’re like the light farce that one sees 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


Ill 


at a theater before the real play begins. You 
laugh at them, but you don’t laugh with them. 
Now, I prefer the solid tragi-comedy (for I sup- 
pose that’s how life can most justly be defined) 
where you can both laugh and cry in keen 
human sympathy with the players.” 

“And sometimes feel very much like hissing 
them as well?” he hazarded. 

“Are you cynical ?” she exclaimed, with a 
quick turn of her lithe shape toward his. “I 
should never have suspected it of you.” 

He felt her look roam his face, lengthwise, 
crosswise, penetrantly, dubiously. It was a 
look full of such insolent yet stingless fa- 
miliarity that his laugh gave it quit9 as spon- 
taneous a reply. 

“Did you think me only an amiable, strug- 
gling young doctor, fragrant with polite plati- 
tudes?” 

“No,” she said, brusquely, “I thought noth- 
ing so silly of you. Your face prevented that.” 

“Thanks. I didn’t know you’d observed it — 
till just now.” 

“Oh, I took you in that day at Mrs. Thirl- 
wall’s. I sized you up, as papa would say. 
Poor papa, I ought to be ashamed to foist my 
slang upon him. I’m not afraid of using slang 
whenever I wish.” 

“Perhaps you mean that by employing it you 
rob it of vulgarity.” 

“You say that as if you thought I didn’t and 
couldn’t,” she bristled. “But you’re wrong. I 
can and do. I never permit myself to be vul- 


112 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


gar ; I only permit myself occasionally to talk 
as if I were. There’s a great difference; some 
time, when you know me better, you’ll under- 
stand it. You see, I take for granted that you 
will know me better.” 

“A very flattering assumption. And then 
you will have perceived that I am not cynical. ’ ’ 

“I hope to have perceived a good many things 
about you.” 

“Some very disappointing ones, no doubt.” 

‘ £ Oh, that depends. I may not have such very 
grand expectations.” 

“You would be more than foolish if you did. 
At the beginning of my career I feel stimulated 
by the conviction that- I’m safely commonplace. ’ ’ 

“You couldn’t have said that if you were. 
Besides, I’d heard too much of you already to 
believe so. Yesterday I went again over to the 
Thirl walls’. I needn’t tell you how they sounded 
your praises there /” 

“ ‘They’?” said Moncrieffe, coloring. “You 
mean, I suppose, Mrs. Thirlwall. She’s been 
good enough to like me most cordially, and to let 
me like her in return.” 

“She’s a dear, isn’t she?” rhapsodized Elma. 
“I don’t wonder she has heart trouble ; she’s 
all heart ! — But she’s not your only admirer. 
You’ve made another conquest at Greendingle, 
and you know it!” 

“You don’t mean the poor little dwarf, Anita?” 
he returned, trying not to smile. “I believe she 
has rather taken a fancy to me . . .” 

“Tut, tut, Mr. Machiavelli ! ” Here Elma’s 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


113 


eyes grew dreamy, and she pursed her small, 
innocent mouth ruminatively. “Of course it’s 
a compliment to have such a girl admire one. 
But oh, there’s to me something about her so 
smotheringly good ! It gives me an oppression 
here,” and she patted her chest. “Mrs. Thirl- 
wall doesn’t give me any such sensation; per- 
haps I never credit her with being half the saint 
that she really is. But Eloise — when I look at 
her I always think of the line — 

‘He is all fault who has no fault at all.’ 

She’s so good, and she doesn’t seem to find it a 
bit hard to be good. Now, I’m not in the least 
good, myself, yet I’ve a kind of ruffianly, beetle- 
browed respect for those who are. But when I 
meet people who behave as if they could walk 
over burning plowshares without even remem- 
bering to say ‘it’s warm,’ I can’t help feeling 
rather at odds with them. I begin to scent self- 
righteousness, and I’ve never had very much 
patience with it. ’ ’ 

“You wouldn’t, you surely wouldn’t, call 
Eloise Thirl wall self-righteous!” 

She looked at him in a queer, oblique, peevish 
way. “Evidently you’re not inclined to think 
her so.” 

“Of course I’m not,” he said, with an empha- 
sis tinged by rebuke. “She’s not only a girl with 
a very modest estimate of her own merits, but 
she’s one who wouldn’t at all do for your list of 
those who find virtue such an easy row to hoe. 
She finds it a very hard one, I happen to be 


114 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


aware; and the trials life has forced her “to look 
straight in the eyes are such as would sap the 
courage of many weaker spirits. But she bears 
up because she is brave and patient — not by any 
means because she is — self-righteous. Heaven 
defend her from ever knowing that she had been 
so misjudged!” 

Moncrieffe spoke with stern force. He was 
not discourteous, but he was reprimanding and 
intense. Elma’s face darkened, and then light- 
ened with a kind of irate smile. In her nature 
was a truculence that resented all teaching of 
lessons, no matter how well they might be de- 
served. But this same species of illogical re- 
bellion was now both checked and modified by 
an attraction which her companion’s face, voice, 
presence, personality, all tyrannously exerted. 
An arbitrator herself — a spoiled child from her 
birth — she had yielded feebly and impetuously to 
the arbitration of this first positive sentiment, 
no less real than sudden, which had touched her 
with its unique spell. 

“It seems to me,” she said, with the tips of 
her lips, as it were, “that Heaven has no reason 
to be called in for the defense of your paragon. 
You are amply qualified to sound her praises 
yourself. ’ ’ 

“I? Far from it. She doesn’t need my cham- 
pionship, or any one else’s.” 

Elma bent for a moment over her plate. As 
she let her fork slip into a little cutlet of fish, 
decoratively powdered black and yellow with 
truffie and egg-yelk, the state of the silver tines 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


115 


became a visible emblem of another stab, wrought 
by jealousy pure and simple. She felt herself 
hating Eloise Thirl wall, and solely because she 
had grown aware that she loved this man who 
sat beside her. It had flashed upon her, as such 
recognitions are wont to flash upon such impe- 
rious and ill-ruled natures, that she had at last 
found in him the man, the husband, of her 
choice. Since early girlhood her father had fed 
her with the dangerous and poisonous doctrine 
that her great prospects as his daughter would 
allow her to marry whomsoever she might select. 
A cat-like element in her rose uppermost now. 
She veiled the disclosure of it, with a corre- 
spondent guile, as she smoothly answered : 

“Let me take back anything I said of her that 
may have displeased you. No doubt I dwelt too 
securely on the fact of having known her longer 
than you have done. But mere months and 
weeks count for so little. Days, with you, have 
evidently counted for a great deal.” 

He did not respond at all stiffly, but with the 
air of one who has said his say and dismissed 
from its delivery all sullen afterthought. 

“I think our brief acquaintanceship has made 
me clearly aware of how fine-fibered and large- 
minded a girl she is.” 

“I see,” purred Elma, playing with her fork. 
“You spoke of her not needing your champion- 
ship, or any one else’s.” 

“Yes — I meant that.” 

“Did you mean it in every sense? Did you 
really mean it as regards— her marrying?” 


116 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


4 4 No; I was not thinking of that. I had not 
the least reason, naturally.’ ’ 

“You take for granted, then, that she will 
marry some day?” 

“It had not occurred to me” — he began, and 
then stopped dead short. “But in Heaven’s 
name,” he soon resumed, with lifted brows, 
“why should she not marry?” 

“Because she is nameless,” Elina said. 44 A 
good many men, even if they loved her, would 
not make her their wife. ’ ’ 

Moncrieffe held back a shocked cry. “I don’t 
think,” he said, with somber hardness, a little 
later, “that the suitor whom she knew to have 
felt one faintest twinge of such recoil would 
stand much chance with her, even though she 
loved him nearly to madness.” 

“Dear, dear,” his listener scoffed. Her tones 
were a positive jeer, and for a second she fur- 
tively gnawed her underlip. 44 What a pedestal 
you place her on ! I must be frank and tell you 
that I don’t think she at all merits your exalted 
views of her. It’s my very firm belief that if 
any fairly decent match came along, she’d snap 
at him but too gratefully — yes, jump straight 
down his throat with very little ado.” 

“Your belief does her much wrong,” he said, 
coldly. “But I did not know you to be her en- 
emy. Had I known it I should greatly have 
preferred — ’ ’ 

“Her enemy!” Elma broke in, with hauteur. 
“I’m nothing of the sort, and your having con- 
cluded so is the most presumptuous bit of be- 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


117 


havior! Her enemy indeed ! I’d do the poor 
thing any reasonable service to-morrow, if she 
were to ask me. ’ ’ 

“I doubt if the ‘poor thing’ would,” said Mon- 
crieffe, who had grown a little pale. “She 
might object to being either patronized or pit- 
ied.” 

Elma flashed back at him: “You say that 
only to oppose and irritate me! If you persevere 
in those impudent tactics here at Riverview, 
you’ll soon either change your tone or be taught 
your place.” 

He looked at her in wonder ; but her outburst 
woke also his contempt. In another minute he 
had the impulse to laugh aloud, and restrained 
himself, thinking that she might be just lawless 
enough, in her ridiculous wrath, to strike him a 
blow. This, however, was not his reason for 
controlling the laugh. He felt that against such 
wanton insolence as hers complete silence could 
be made a weapon of rare potency. The smart 
of her words, like that of a burn in flesh, came 
gradually to him while their echoes vibrated 
more and more through his brain. He pressed 
his lips together, and felt the food which had 
seemed but a minute before so savory, now turn 
nauseous. Taught his place! What place? — 
That of being an honest man who had come here 
to make an honest living by the aid of such 
learning as many an hour of stern study had 
amassed? And who was she, this daughter of a 
patent-medicine vender, that she should talk of 
teaching him his place? He would teach her 


118 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


how much he cared for her dollars, tainted with 
the odor of quack nostrums, devoutly as others 
might cringe to her because of them! 

He took a good gulp of wine, suddenly recol- 
lecting that it was there to take. Elma’s voice 
reacned him, presently ; she appeared to be again 
talking with Mr. Bedchambers, and he thought 
her intonations rang, even for her, affectedly 
loud and gay. On a sudden some one spoke to 
her across tne table, and she answered with her 
sharp yet not unmusical voice keyed so that all 
must hear. All seemingly chose to listen as well ; 
and although Moncrieffe did not know it, she 
was doing what she always did at every River- 
view dinner where she chose to appear— making 
herself conversationally explosive and ebullient,. 

Perhaps no one noticed that her air was more 
hectic, more spasmodic, than usual. Moncrieffe 
was at first her only heedless auditor. This same 
voice had so recently plumbed the depths of his 
resentment that its mere sound for a time kept 
him affrontedly deaf to the sense of what it spoke. 

But soon the whole tableful of guests grew 
hilarious. Two or three of them laughed un- 
willingly, however, and a gentleman covertly 
sneered to a lady : “She’s at her old trick of talk- 
ing everybody else to death. I knew she’d begin 
with the champagne; she always does; it im- 
mediately goes to her head.” 

“She’s so little head for it to go to,” the lady 
sneered back. “And the idea of her poking fun 
at poor sick old Mr. Dilloway ! It’s such hid- 
eous taste.” 


A MARTYR OP DESTINY. 


119 


“Awful! Just look at her common old father. 
He’s almost doubled up with laughter.” 

“Yes. I suppose they’ve rehearsed it all at 
home. She’s told him precisely when to be con- 
vulsed by her stupendous wit. ’ ’ 

“I’d just dropped in at the Dilloways’,” Elma 
was meanwhile galloping on, “for an ordinary 
morning visit. I like Bertha Dilloway ever so 
much, and this time I’d hoped to escape her very 
nice yet impossible papa. But he’d appeared, as 
I’ve said, and he’d distinctly come to stay. Bertha, 
dear girl, had whispered to me, as she always 
does, ‘Papa will see people when they call, and 
you know he has that dreadful trouble, aphasia, 
and you mustn’t mind if lie talks a trifle queerly. ’ 
I of course told Bertha that I wouldn’t mind, 
and tried to look immensely polite. And all the 
while Mr. Dilloway’s bland eyes were fixed on 
me behind the gentle blaze of their spectacles, 
and I had little chills wandering up and down 
my spine at the thought of what new horrid 
thing his aphasia might make him say next. . . 
We talked about the weather, and how many of 
our regular residents had been driven to the sea- 
side and mountains because of it, and Mr. Dillo- 
way hadn’t done anything for several minutes 
but stare and smile, when suddenly he remarked 
to me, in his genial bass voice: ‘You’re talking 
about the great heat, Miss Blagdon, but I ob- 
serve that you haven’t taken off your potatoes. ’ . . 
I felt myself turn scarlet, and looked helplessly 
at Bertha, and wondered what agonizing thing 
the taking off of my potatoes might imply, when 


120 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


Bertha sweetly murmured below her breath : 
‘He means your gloves, my dear.’ Then I 
stammered some inanity about my gloves not 
making me any warmer, and the old gentleman 
graciously grinned. But soon Bertha innocently 
exploded another bomb-shell. She said she 
feared the temperature would be almost insup- 
portable among the hot-houses, and that she was 
sorry for this because she would so have liked 
me to see a rare and beautiful sight in one of 
them. ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mr. Dilloway, taking the 
words from his daughter’s mouth, ‘we’ve an 
enormous kangaroo, as white as snow, sur- 
rounded on every side by hanging and climbing 
cockroaches.’ Of course I couldn’t feel grieved 
that the temperature of the hot-house prevented 
me from observing such a spectacle, and while I 
was trying to repress a visible shudder Bertha 
whispered once more : ‘He means a night-bloom- 
ing cereus, you know, surrounded by orchids.’ 
After this I got away as soon as I reputably 
could, but not until I had promised to take Mr. 
Dilloway ’s very kindest regards to my mother- 
in-law, by whom he meant papa.” 

In the tumult of ensuing laughter Mrs. Bell- 
chambers said to Moncneffe : 

“I do think it rather cruel of her to turn into 
ridicule what is really a most sad affliction.” 

“It is cruel,” he assented, and in his thoughts 
he pursued: “but should that be at all surpris- 
ing?” 

By the time tha,t the ladies rose from dinner 
Elma had neither again addressed him nor 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


121 


looked at him. Some of the gentlemen offered 
their arms to the ladies, conducting them to the 
door of the dining-room. Others did not, and 
Moncrieffe was among those who did not. 

Afterward Mr. Blagdon “interdooced him 
round,” as the millionaire might himself have 
said. Moncrieffe knew that it would be profes- 
sionally to his interest if he now tried to please, 
but it was much against his inclination to seem 
as if he were trying very hard to please. He 
escaped the infelicity of such an effect, and pro- 
duced an impression of just that shadowy and 
impersonal sort whose success lies in its inoffen- 
siveness. The company was sprinkled with a 
few mighty Riverview magnates, all of whom 
struck our young doctor as rather dismally un- 
approachable. It seemed to him that their 
money had deadened if it had not deteriorated 
them. Mr. Bedchambers whispered to him that 
they were self-made men, and as he watched 
them, with either their deep-plowed, facial 
wrinkles, or their trim, snowy whiskers, or their 
assertive stomachs, it entered his thought that 
the making of oneself, like that, must necessi- 
tate not only a good deal of exhaustive effort 
but a' good deal of physical maturity. He might 
have added mental dullness as well, though to 
this rule Mr. Abijah Blagdon, nimbly and volu- 
bly talkative, proved a marked exception. Mr. 
Blagdon, however, was doubtless tolerated as 
one of them while not in reality ranked so. He 
had a most familiar and babbling manner with 
all, and none offered him more than a sleepy 


122 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


semblance of disapproval or distaste. Moncrieffe 
could not help asking himself if the mere big 
brute force of his money did not drag from them 
these civilities. They all had what they would 
have defined as New York “positions,” and 
they all knew how to speak with a very much 
less lax and vagabond syntax. Except for that 
fine stone castle overlooking the river, and those 
millions got out of “ner valine” and other quack- 
eries, would they have let themselves be button- 
holed, and joked to, and joked over by this lo- 
quacious old bit of human homespun, whom 
most of their butlers could have taught the rudi- 
ments of good manners? 

“It’s easy to see where his daughter gets her 
loquacious instincts from,” muttered Mr. Bell- 
chambers to Moncrieffe between cigar-puffs (to- 
bacco not being fattening), after they had listened 
to one voluminous monologue about the River- 
view road-taxes and another (not untouched by 
purse-proud boastfulness) about the swindling 
tendencies of horse-dealers. In this last outflow 
Blagdon had told the prices of several horses 
which he had lately purchased, and his needless 
mention of the sums glittered with an almost 
piteous ostentation. Yet none of his auditors 
gave a sign of repugnance. Moncrieffe let his 
eye glance along their lips to see if they betrayed 
ever so faintly the tell-tale sag of disgust. But, 
no. “The might of money again,” he mused. 
“They ail believe he’s telling 'the truth, and he 
very probably is. They’ve none of them paid 
such prices for their own horseflesh, and this 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


123 


mere coarse, material fact wrings a kind of re- 
luctant respect from them. It all comes to one 
issue with men of their plutocratic mold. They 
start by getting money for what it can buy, and 
they end by revering it for how the mere having 
of it will make poorer men envy them.” 

He at length rose, with a weariness and de- 
pression which his factitious smile deftly con- 
cealed, and plunged a half-consumed cigar into 
a hissing bath of somebody else’s deserted cham- 
pagne. He did not suppose that his intent of 
joining the ladies would cause a general break- 
ing-up of the gentlemen, and felt a pardonably 
politic regret when he saw them all rise in re- 
sponse to his own movement. But social inex- 
perience had yet to teach him (although he had 
been bred among the gentler civilized niceties) 
that on these after-dinner occasions of tarriance 
over coffee and tobacco, nearly everybody is apt 
to have got it on his conscience that he is linger- 
ing too long, and that any one who gives the 
first signal for an exodus is regarded rather 
gratefully than otherwise. 

Mrs. Cassilis, before quitting her dining-room, 
had delivered some piece of playful sarcasm to 
her male guests about the near piazza being a 
good deal cooler than the present heated apart- 
ment, and the earnest hope of herself and her 
retiring sisters that they would be joined there 
some time between then and midnight. 

Moncrieffe, who had now become one of a 
general throng, found that he had only to step 
through a broad open window in order to find 


124 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


himself on a very broad and mystic-looking do- 
main, starred here and there with globular elec- 
trics, and showing the laides grouped at little 
tables, dim as themselves. 

While inside he had seen the lightning flash 
vivider, and had heard the growls of thunder 
louder. As he moved forward a figure slipped 
from a portion of the piazza which was in dense 
shade. At first he did not recognize Elma Blag- 
don. Then a turn of the head told him that the 
vague face was hers. In another instant it light- 
ened acutely, and a peal of savage thunder at 
once followed, with an abrupt sibilance of 
rain. 

“I’m so horribly afraid of the storm; I’m 
crazy to run in the house and hide somewhere. 
But I’ve made up my mind to tell you something 
and get it over. It’s this : I think I acted very 
rudely; I was very angry.” 

“It seemed to me that you certainly were 
angry,” Moncrieffe said; “as certainly as that 
I had no idea what you were angry about. ” 

“You didn’t know — of course not.” There 
came another flash, and she gave a little scream, 
drooping her head. Here he felt her hand seize 
the lapel of his coat. “Please come a little fur- 
ther back ; I don’t want them to stare at us, for 
I’m — crying. Yes, I am! I suppose you guessed 
it by my voice when I first spoke. There, that’s 
better; we’re hidden, now, behind this angle of 
the house. I can’t tell just why I’m crying. It’s 
partly on account of my impudence to you, and 
partly on account of the storm. . . Ugh! wasn't 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


125 


that loud? I — I dare say the lightning shows 
you what a goose I’m making of myself. But I 
can’t help it, I can’t help it. I mean, in both 
ways, you and the thunderstorm. I’m apologiz- 
ing to you, however, and not to the thunder- 
storm. Gracious goodness, it ought to apologize 
to me for scaring me out of my wits. Apologies 
are very hard things to make. At least I’ve 
been told so. I’ve never made one before; I 
never had to, I never wanted to. But I want 
now. How shall I word it? how shall I phrase 
it? I’m very, very, very sorry, and I ask your 
pardon with all my soul!” 

“My dear Miss Blagdon! ” said Moncrieffe, 
flattered, fascinated, and yet remonstrant. 

Just then there came that simultaneity of bolt 
and crash which makes you tell yourself with 
hysteric inconsequence that you are struck, un- 
concerned by the bad logic of telling yourself so 
and being so at one and the same moment. It 
was a serious down-stroke of the tigerish storm, 
and it called a few dismayed shrieks from the 
near assembled women. 

It did more with Elma ; it made her plunge 
her head terrifiedly toward Moncrieffe ’s breast, 
and clutch his shoulders with either hand. It 
was a wild embrace with her, and it lasted until 
he had slid an arm about her waist, saying some- 
thing quite commonplace in the way of encour- 
agement and cheer. 

“Ho, no,” she quavered; and then, a second 
after she had receded from him he felt that 
she had got one of his hands between both her 


126 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


own. Another flash now showed him her face, 
whitely sparkling with tears. 

“I’m ashamed of myself! And I’m horribly 
afraid, too, of the lightning; but I’m just as 
much afraid of your contempt!” 

When the rattle of the next thunder-peal had 
died away, he stooped down and put his lips to 
the feverish knot her two hands were making 
about his own. 

“Does that mean you do forgive me?” she 
demanded. 

“It means any good-natured thing you’ll let 
me say to you. ’•’ He began lightly, but her un- 
foreseen surrender gave to the next words an 
underpulse of feeling that quite* spoiled his re- 
sponse as comedy. “It means that I look on 
you in a new way — a more generous, human, 
womanly way.” 

“I see,” she quavered; “you’re reading me by 
flashes of lightning. ” 

“Yes — if you please.” 

She still retained her clasp on his hand. “How 
well or ill do you read me that way? I spoke 
about her — I said horrid, cattish things about 
her. I sometimes think I’m a cat — but I’m 
something more, I’m something better. You 
dragged those slurs out of me. I’ve never played 
such a part before; I’m ashamed of having 
played it to-night. That’s something I should 
have tacked on to my apology. I tack it on 
now, in all humility, in all remorse. She’s sweet, 
she’s noble; I’m not fit to tie her shoes. Do you 
understand?” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


127 


“ I understand that you’re excited, and — ” 

“Oh, excited, yes, if you please, but that 
doesn’t explain me. I — I’ve got a good impulse. 
I’ve developed a genuine conscience, and I’m 
letting it master me. There’s an apology I owe 
her. What I said about her birth was dastardly 
— abominable. And I said it — shall I tell you 
why I said it?” 

The storm wreaked its mad mood in another 
lurid and tumultuous burst. He saw her face 
as plainly as if day had lighted it. And the 
sight racked him with amazement. 

“I said it because I was jealous of her! Yes, 
jealous of her! I — I’ve known you only for a 
short time. Bat I’ve known you long enough — 
Hever mind. There’s not a man living who can 
ever say that he dared even to touch my hand 
with his lips as you’ve just done. I’ve had 
countless fancies, caprices, fads, as they call 
them. But now, for the first time — ” Here she 
flung his hand away, and in the dusk he saw 
her glide toward a dusk still deeper. “I was 
jealous — jealous — jealous !” Her voice, not high, 
though softly keen, seemed to vanish spectrally 
like her own shape. 

In a little while he knew that she had gone 
away for good and all. It was only a step to 
rejoin the gathered company, under the safe- 
sheltering piazza-roof, amid the silvery twilight 
of the electrics. 

“Oh, it’s you, doctor,” called Mrs. Cassilis. 
“Everybody’s frightened to death by the light- 
ning. You ought to have brought with you 


128 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


some soothing drugs. And pray where is Miss 
Blagdon?” 

“How should Dr. Moncrieffe know?” shota 
clear voice from one of the dining-room windows 
whence Elma (having chosen some circuitous 
route of her own) now coolly emerged. “Pray, 
is Dr. Moncrieffe my keeper?” 


X. 

The summers at Riverview are often trying 
enough, but the autumns are nearly always one 
continuous enchantment. October had put her 
richest pomps, this year, into the frosted trees. 
A wavering line of them, like some parterre of 
miraculous tulips, gleamed in the limpid after- 
noon light that shone through a wide, denuded 
window of Magnus White wright’s bedroom. 
Directly opposite this window was his bed, and 
he lay upon it, his black eyes full of hectic luster, 
his face as peaceful as it was pale. Close at his 
side sat Moncrieffe, and they were talking to- 
gether. “That is the sick man’s voice,” you 
would have said, but it was really the well 
man’s. The sick man’s was far the gayer and 
heartier of the two. 

“I want you to lie in bed at least three days 
longer, Magnus. You’re wonderfully strong, 
considering the severity of your attack. But 
recovery will be so much surer if you give your- 
self unstinted rest. ’ ’ 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


129 


“ Recovery! Oh, my dear old Basil! It does 
seem so droll to have you talk about recovery, 
when you must be quite sure just bow sick I 
am!” 

‘ 4 You’ve a splendid constitution, Magnus. 
This is a rather bad knock-down; but there are 
cases — ” 

“Of recovery? Come, now, Basil. Recollect 
that you’re not talking to a patient whose igno- 
rance of medical lore makes him your credulous 
dupe. Dear boy, you can’t practice on me with 
your splendid gammon. If I’m good for three 
more years I shall be a marvel.” 

“You’ll be good for ten more years if you’ll 
let me show you how it’s possible.” 

“Bah, my boy! You can’t. Were I ten 
years older you might.” 

“Go with me back into the West as soon as 
you’re able to move about, and promise me that 
you’ll never think of returning till I sanction 
such a course. ’ ’ 

“Basil, Basil, you know as well as I do what 
that would mean. I’d stay on and stay on, and 
some day we’d both feel a little encouraged in 
spite of ourselves, and then, presto ! another bad 
turn, and all would be over. No; if I get through 
this attack I’ll wait for another. Not that I 
won’t try and stave off another. But it’s so en- 
tirely absurd for a fellow as resigned as I am to 
think of spoiling your fine chances merely that 
I may make a pair of doomed lungs give me a 
mere little trifle of a longer breathing- term. ” 

Monerieffe heaved an impatient sigh. “Fine 


130 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


chances! Through the summer I’ve managed 
to get a few paying patients.” 

“Nonsense! you’re a distinct success at River- 
view. In five more years, if you stay here, 
you’ll be able to storm New York and quietly 
conquer it. I wish I could live to see your per- 
fect professional triumph there.” 

“Bo you do wish to live for something,” Mon- 
crieffe grimly muttered, as he rose and went to 
the dismantled window, with its brilliant, rain- 
bow autumnal prospect. 

The voice from the bed came buoyant and 
blithe. “You hit my resignation a pretty square 
blow, there, Basil — a blow right between the eyes. 
But, after all, I’ve got my philosophic safeguard. 
If I did live on, like that, I might find that my 
affection for you was darkly tinged with disap- 
pointment. ’ ’ 

“You’ve always an excuse for dying,” said 
Moncrieffe, with eyes fixed on the halcyon hills. 

‘ ‘ Of course, even if I were prosperous and prom- 
inent a few years hence, I might appeal to you 
as a person who had won distinction only to 
blend it with discontent. ’ ’ 

Something in his tones made Whitewright’s 
brow puzzledly cloud. “That isn’t like you, 
Basil,” he murmured. 

“It isn’t like me as you know me, my dear 
friend.” He turned and faced full the calm, 
colorless countenance gleaming from the pillows. 

‘ ‘ But you’ve a happy and hopeful disposition. ’ ’ 

“Disposition isn’t ‘in it,’ as they say nowa- 
days.” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


131 


“But energy and purpose are.” 

“Yes — and how circumstance can thwart and 
defeat them!” 

“Oh, of course. It’s ‘a divinity that shapes 
our ends rough, hew them as we will’' — according 
to the pessimist’s new reading of Shakespeare.” 

“I’m no pessimist,” said Moncrieffe, with 
quick denial. “I’m a realist, an actualist. I 
can’t shut my eyes to a certain imminent threat 
of unescapable failure and sorrow, which taints 
life like the floating poison of an epidemic. Some 
people breathe it in safely; others breathe it in 
and either suffer or perish.” Then a thought 
struck him that it was only the noble courage 
and scorn of all disaster shown by Whitewright 
in his late dangerous illness that had tempted 
him to vent a gloomy formula of faith hitherto 
quite jealously guarded from his ill-starred friend. 

With a gesture full of airy heyday, he veered 
again toward the view that the window com- 
manded. “What a perfect afternoon, and what 
a pity that we can’t enjoy it out of doors to- 
gether ! But to-day is only one of a brilliant 
autumnal sisterhood, and soon we shall take a 
breezy ramble in one another’s company.” 

“Of course we shall, Basil,” again rang the 
buoyant voice from the bed. “I haven’t the 
faintest intention of dying just yet. Come and 
sit here beside me again. That’s right. Now, 
will you let me tell you why you’re out of 
spirits?” 

“And you call me so because I merely refer .'o 
the obvious fact that mishaps are inevitable to 


132 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


the wariest or the wisest? But if I were out of 
spirits, wouldn’t your illness give me a rather 
solid excuse?” 

“Very prettily said, I must concede. But my 
ailings, one way and another, are getting to be a 
good deal of an old story. . . Ah, Basil, it must 
be bad enough to worry about one woman. But 
two! I wonder your hair’s not snow-white!” 

Moncrieffe flushed and frowned, both at once. 
“Magnus, Magnus!” he murmured. 

“Am I really wrong? You know I’m not. 
Elma Blagdon’s in love with you, and you’re in 
love with Eloise Thirlwall.” 

Moncrieffe raised a hand in mock wrath. He 
held it poised over Whitewright’s head while he 
muttered, with just the dim spark of a smile 
breaking through his stormy glare : 

“You may have wrung your belief that Elma 
Blagdon cared about me from certain zigzag 
confidences I’ve made you now and again: but 
as for the other part of your audacious assertion, 
it’s imagination mixed with pure impertinence. ” 

“Why don’t y n strike me?” smiled White- 
wright. “I’m ill andhel aess. You could thus 
forever bury in ob ‘on the weighty secret that 
I’ve discovered.” 

“You deplorable busybody!” said Moncrieffe, 
letting his hand drop like a feather on the white 
forehead beneath it and begin fondly to touch 
one of the heavy locks that lay there in dark 
loops. “You haven’t discovered any weighty 
secret whatever. You’re only making me the 
victim of your vivid fancy.” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


133 


“Oh, you've told me nothing, as regards that 
lovable and womanly Eloise.” 

“ Who, . pray, has told you, then?” 

“She herself.” 

Moncrieffe gave a great start. “Bah!” he 
soon said, resettling himself in his chair. “I 
understand what you mean. She came here yes- 
terday, while I was absent, and spent an hour 
with you. It was sweet of her, and just like 
her. Of course you spoke together about me. It 
was a case of the absent not being scandalized. 
I dare say you praised me preposterously.” 

“I rather ran you down, if memory serves 
me, Basil.” 

“Ah, you did! How? By saying that I 
didn’t care for her?” 

The sick man’s hand shot out for his friend’s 
and clutched it retentively. “My disparagement 
w~as rather mild, after all.” 

“As if I didn’t know it!” said Moncrieffe, 
with a husky break in his voice. “You probably 
told her I was ambitious.” 

J How you hit the truth ! I did say something 
of the sort. I said it just to see how she would 
bear it. And she bore it with a placid gravity 
quite delicious.” 

“What on earth did you expect her to do? 
Roam the room tempestuously?” 

“Ah, it isn’t in her to do that, Basil! But 
of course she’s heard of how you go to The 
Terraces.” 

Moncrieffe had got both hands into his pock- 
ets, now, and was tipping iris chair backward, 


134 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


with down-drooped head. “And don’t you sup- 
pose, Magnus, that somebody else has heard of 
how I go to Greendingle?” 

“Yes.” 

For a time there was silence between the 
friends. Whitewright broke it, with sudden 
solemnity. 

“Basil, you could marry Elma Blagdon to- 
morrow, if you chose. But if you did so you’d 
be fatally unwise.” 

Moncrieffe shot up from his chair again, and 
went to the window. He placed both arms on 
its sill, and stood leaning there, with his back to 
the man he loved — the man he loved so well that 
he would have permitted from him tenfold the 
familiarity just received. 

“You’d spoil your career,” Whitewright pur- 
sued, with inflexible kindliness. “Believe me, 
Basil, when I tell you that though the tempta- 
tion might be great, your yielding to it would 
prove disastrous. It isn’t merely that such a 
girl could never make you happy; she could 
never exert upon you any but a down-dragging, 
debasing, spoliative power. Don’t ask me how 
I know her so well. In one way, of course, I 
know her ill. But I’d heard of her, here at River- 
view, before you and she met; and then, after- 
ward, there have been unconscious revelations 
in your talks with me that have painted her 
portrait with savagely realistic hues.” 

Moncrieffe’s face w^s no less calm than stern 
as he slowly placed his back against the window. 

“Magnus,” he said, “listen: I do not intend 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


135 


to marry Elma Blagdon. It is possible — I say 
this with a sense of immodesty and almost self- 
disgust — that she may regret my decision. But 
it was made before you spoke. To-night I’ve 
that engagement I told you of, to dine at Green- 
dingle. I need not fulfill it; your illness — ” 

“Oh, bother my illness, Basil!” White- 
wright’s words were resonant with reprimand. 
“You’ll go. and you’ll come back with good 
news for me, even if it’s five o’clock in the 
morning. I may not be awake, but your good 
news will keep. It will keep, let us hope, for 
the rest of your lifetime!” 

That last sentence, lovingly abrupt, echoed 
itself in Moncrieffe’s ears as he drove away to 
Greendingle about an hour later. Precarious 
and slender as were his fortunes, he believed 
that Eloise would consent unhesitatingly to 
share them. Hundreds of times he had told him- 
self that the sorcery Elma had contrived to exert 
over him was in no way concerned with her 
worldly place as the heiress of great wealth. He 
had got to know the enslaved and ludicrous po- 
sition of Pinckney Cassilis, and had more than 
once openly told White wright that it was a 
severe and vital warning to any sordid-minded 
suitor. The chronicler of these records would 
now beg his reader to observe one salient fact: 
Moncrieffe, as he drove to Greendingle, meant 
most heartily to end a complication which had 
been causing him no end of disquiet. The course 
was plain : he had only to get Eloise’s consent 
that she would marry him and then swiftly 


136 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


make it known to Elma that such a step had 
been taken. Out of Elma’s presence he always 
felt strong ; in it, vacillant and feeble. 

As he entered the pleasant and home-like sit- 
ting-roorrf at Grreendingle, Anita ran to meet 
him. She had learned to like him exceedingly, 
and he in turn had become fascinated by her 
strange mental blending of infancy and matur- 
ity. The effect was at times one of terrible 
pathos — at times one of elfish drollery. 

“I’m all alone,” she piped to him, as he took 
her on his knee, and looked down at her minia- 
ture body and womanly face. “I was waiting 
for you. They said you were coming, so I stole 
down here. I s’pose I did it, though, to get 
away from Dunstan. ’ ’ She hid her face on Mon- 
crieffe’s shoulder. “He makes me bad, and I 
haven’t been bad since I promised you I wouldn’t 
be. And that’s a whole year ago.” Here she 
burst into a chattering screech of merriment at 
her own mistake. “Not a year, not a year — a 
week, a week!” 

“And you say that your brother Dunstan 
makes you bad?” 

“Yes; yes.” 

Secretly Moncrieffe felt very congenial with 
this sensation. The presence of Dunstan Thirl- 
wall had more than once wakened in him pro- 
nounced tendencies to “badness.” 

“Why doesn’t mamma punish him when he's 
bad?” cried Anita, lifting one little clenched 
hand, like a hairless monkey’s. “JT get pun- 
ished, and lie’s mamma’s child just as much as 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


137 


I am ! And a little while ago he made mamma 
very mad, and he made Eloise cry.” 

Moncrieffe gnawed his lips. Dunstan’s hatred 
of himself was now, as he well knew, a raging 
fire. On several occasions when they had met 
at The Terraces he had left in haughty distaste ; 
and on several others he had remained, sullenly 
outstaying the man whom it cost him torments 
of supercilious spleen to admit as his rival. 
Moncrieffe had ill turn reaped more of dreary 
amusement than indignation from this smolder- 
ing insolence and contempt. At the same time 
his clear certainty of Elma’s preference for him- 
self had filled him with tingles of very human 
triumph. But of late Dunstan’s demeanor had 
seemed to portend some open and ugly quarrel. 
Here, he had decided, was a desperate fortune- 
hunter, balked of his aim and laying the reason 
of such defeat savagely at his own door. This 
was a manifest piece of fatuity in the eyes of 
Moncrieffe, who had seen the whole case clearly 
enough to recognize Elma’s firm resolve never to 
become Mrs. Dunstan Thirl wall. That it would 
please Eloise’ s cousin to have him propose for 
her hand, Moncrieffe had some time ago realized. 
Such an event Dunstan would have looked upon 
in the light of a removed barrier. It was also 
obvious to the young doctor that this polished 
cad (so he had grown to define him in his own 
scornful reflections) would have approved almost 
any sort of marriage that Eloise might make. 
He held her very existence as a shame and 
scandal to his mother’s household, and would 


138 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


have exulted to procure her final absence from 
it, even if brought about by marriage with so 
insignificant a nobody as the new struggling 
practitioner at Riverview. 

Moncrieffe hated to question Anita as to why 
Dunstan had angered her mother and wrung 
tears from Eloise. But very possibly he would 
have put to the singular little child- woman on 
his lap certain irrepressible questions, if Dun- 
stan himself had not suddenly, entered the room. 

This was a signal for Anita to spring from her 
friend’s knees and swiftly disappear. Mon- 
crieffe rose, imagining that Dunstan would offer 
him a hand. But he merely nodded, instead, 
and not civilly at that. He did not wear even- 
ing-dress — a rare occurrence with him, even 
when dining most quietly at home — and his 
shirt-front and necktie showed a ruffled untidi- 
ness wholly foreign to his usual neat nicety of 
attire. 

Moncrieffe remained standing, determined not 
to break the silence. Dunstan’s back was now 
turned to him, and with drooped head he had 
seemingly fixed his gaze upon a pair of big and- 
irons in the fireless but wood-loaded hearth. 
After a few more seconds he wheeled about, let- 
ting his hands slip into his trousers’ pockets and 
not only lifting his head but posing it an inch or 
so higher than was his wont. 

“I think I had better tell you quite frankly,” 
he said, “that there has been a disturbance here 
at home which threatens to make matters rather 
awkward for you as our guest. ’ ’ 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


139 


4 4 Those are not pleasant tidings,” returned 
Moncrieffe, with a tight rein on his composure. 

4 4 If you mean to suggest that I shall take my 
leave, that will not be difficult, though I should 
regret going without seeing either Mrs. Thirl- 
wall or your cousin.” 

Dunstan made a dry, caustic little grimace. 
“Suppose you were to say 4 my mother or Miss 
Thirlwall,’ Dr. Moncrieffe? I take for granted 
you are aware that Eloise is not my cousin.” 

The brutality of this last sentence cut its 
hearer like a sword- stab. 

4 4 You may deny that she is your cousin, Mr. 
Thirl wall. But your mother, as I chance to be 
certain, does not deny that she is her niece.” 

4 4 My mother is often unreasonable. She has 
been highly so this afternoon.” 

Moncrieffe felt his features harden. 4 If you 
have the faintest regard for her life you will 
humor such ‘unreasonableness.’ ” 

4 4 Oh, yes, I know,” he said, with a sneering 
airiness. 4 4 But one can’t forever keep a bit in 
one’s mouth. There are things that simply must 
be said. And what I said a little while ago 
chanced to concern — yourself.” 

“Really?” 

“I’ll be blunt.” He fixed his eyes full on his 
watcher’s face; they looked as frigid and slug- 
gish as agates. “It struck me your attentions 
to Eloise were of a nature that would warrant 
my mother in asking you just how far you 
meant them. I advised her to do so, and was 
met by severest displeasure. Eloise, overhear- 


140 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


ing, became abusive to me for having hinted 
anything so barbarous. Naturally I defended 
my position; and I defend it still.” 

Moncrieffe had seen his motive instantly. It 
was to precipitate an engagement between Eloise 
and himself, and thus advance and advantage his 
own cause with the heiress at The Terraces. 

“Whatever your opinions in this matter,” 
Moncrieffe replied, with a slight curl of the lip, 
“you are not authorized to make them an active 
force. In the first place your doing so must 
shock and mortify your mother and Miss Thirl- 
wall; and, in the second place, your denying all 
bond of blood between that young lady and 
yourself places her outside the bounds of your 
guardianship or guidance.” 

“That was well spoken, Basil Moncrieffe!” 
cried a voice at the doorway ; and Mrs. Thirl wall 
came into the room. She looked her old matronly 
self, sweet and genial, except that her bright 
eyes glittered a little too keenly. She went up 
to Moncrieffe with a hand outstretched. He 
caught it anxiously in both his own. 

“My dear lady!” he exclaimed. “This will 
not do!” 

She understood him at once. “ That will not 
do!” she said, with sudden melancholy bitter- 
ness, pointing toward her son. “It is language 
that makes me, his mother, tremble with shame. 
Still, doctor, my suffering has been nothing to 
Eloise’s!” 

“Let Doctor Moncrieffe end Eloise’s suffering, 
then ! ’ ’ Dunstan retorted. ‘ * Come, now, mother, 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


141 


you can think as hard things about my behavior 
as you please ; but you must admit that this gen- 
tleman has it in his power — ” 

“ You should not use the word ‘gentleman,’ ” 
shuddered Mrs. Thirlwall. “If you are present 
at the dinner-table I shall beg Dr. Moncrieffe 
not to remain.” 

“Oh, I shall certainly be present there,” said 
Dunstan. “And Eloise would dry her foolish 
eyes and join us all in the dining-room if Dr. 
Moncrieffe would be willing to send her a mes- 
sage of the right persuasive sort.” 

“Dunstan,” said his mother, with a calm that 
somehow spoke louder than if she had used pas- 
sionate outcry, “it is not true that Eloise would 
this evening come downstairs ; it is not true that 
any entreaties would induce her to come. What- 
ever incentive has urged you, no failure could be 
more complete than your present effort.” 

She turned to Moncrieffe ; their eyes met. It 
was just as if she had said, in so many words : 
“He wishes to drag from you an offer of mar- 
riage to Eloise. I want this from you as in- 
tensely as he does, yet with a far different mo- 
tive. Be silent, though, and resent the atrocity 
of his demand. He has no right to make it ; he 
makes it because he hates you, because he is 
poisonously jealous of you. Act as your man- 
hood urges, and refuse to obey his dictates, 
which are grossly presumptuous.” 

“What mysterious ‘incentive’ do you mean?” 
rang Dunstan’s answer. “I can’t for the life 
of me imagine.” His voice was very surly and 


142 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


gruff. 4 4 1 told you I would tell Moncrieff e what 
I thought he was expected to do, and I’ve car- 
ried out my purpose. That’s all. Let him act 
now as his own sense of the situation may 
prompt.” 

Eagerly, and with lowered voice, Mrs. Thirl- 
wall said to Moncrieffe: 44 I’m very well; don’t 
worry about me. Let me give orders for your 
horse and wagon; I know you’ve stabled them; 
you always do. Don’t be angry at this dismis- 
sal; I can’t help it, and it’s so much better for 
everybody. Eloise will not come down; nothing 
could induce her.” Here the lovable, worried 
face beamed imploringly upon him. “The din- 
ner would be a torture — you must see that. Just 
outside our west gate there’s that big willow at 
the brookside. If you leave at once I’ll have 
your wagon meet you there in no time. It’s so 
much better! And you can write me, if you 
will — you can write her ! And remember, my 
friend — I’m not dangerously excited. I haven’t 
the faintest physical heart-trouble. It isn’t 
agitation of the sort you fear; it’s grief — it’s 
grief and self-humiliation. Now, do go! — go 
at once, whatever you may — write — afterward. 
You’ve acted just right so far; you’ve been 
perfect; I’m with you utterly, and against him 
utterly, though he is my son!” 

Moncrieffe, with a pressure of the hand that 
he had again clasped, obeyed this ardent behest. 
He left the piazza, a few seconds afterward, and 
passed down into the suave autumn twilight of 
the lawns. It had been dim in the sitting-room. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


143 


Out here, although the sun had set, it seemed 
for a moment oddly bright. - The grass, in its 
October aftermath, was almost black below the 
strong yet dreamy splendor of new-sunken day. 
There was no wind, but a coolness delicate yet 
thrilling freighted the tranquil air. To watch 
the grass, dusky and wide- wavering, was to feel 
how this coolness had crept into its thick, short 
fleece, and perhaps fancy the pleasure of slipping 
one’s fingers between its lissome spears. The 
frost had not yet touched its verdure; hence 
where it underlay with dark emerald the blighted, 
radiant trees, they shone forth all the fairer in 
this eerie and silvery light. Here towered a 
huge chestnut that was one monochrome of gold ; 
there loomed an oak, grown tawny as tanned 
leather; yonder blazed a maple whose boughs 
were an equal battle between gold and scarlet. 
Other trees, less intense of coloring, or perhaps 
mellowed by distance, gleamed with the smoky 
purples and reds of old Eastern tapestries. One 
tallish cedar, in the crimson clasp of a bounteous 
creeper, stood forth vivid enough to be the living 
emblem of an overwhelming human passion. 
But more forcefully still did the sunset express 
this idea — the lonely, profound, mystic sunset, 
that died as in few other lands than ours it is 
won’t to die more divinely. Long clouds of the 
richest amber, laid lengthwise, were like steps 
leading to gateways of porphyry, where the 
gates, flung open, showed an opal sea beyond, 
breaking on shadowy wharves and piers. To 
climb those steps— to pass through that gateway 


144 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


— to reach that translucent sea, and sail forth 
upon it toward the light of the great throbbing 
star which beamed remotely aloof — such in im- 
agination some gazer might believe himself em- 
powered to do, beholding in pictured allegory 
both the shadowy voyage and its far-away lumi- 
nous haven. There are sunsets that intoxicate 
with their symbolisms, their spiritual analogies. 
This was one that a poet like Shelley would have 
loved, and about which he might have woven 
some wild, unearthly lyric. 

Mon crieff e, whom the need for scientific ex- 
actitudes had not kept from strong poetic sym- 
pathies, looked coldly and even heedlessly this 
evening on all those exquisite heavenly hints in 
the fading autumn day. He reached the big 
willow at the brookside in a state of sharp men- 
tal turmoil. 

“You can write me, if you will — you can write 
her. . . I’m with you utterly, and against him 
utterly, though he is my son.” 

These words of Mrs. Thirlwall’s haunted him 
like a faint carillon of bells heard from miles 
away, while at the same time Dunstan’s attitude 
now affronted him in terms obstreperous and rib- 
ald. He had not long to wait for his v/agon ; 
the promise given him under such pathetic pres- 
sure was very promptly kept. But while he was 
driven homeward through the sweet chill of the 
darkening country he felt angry rebellion domi- 
nate other emotions. He had gone to Green- 
dingle, as we know, with all willingness to tell 
Eloise that he desired her for his wife. And the 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


145 


thought of forever cloaking and shielding her 
namelessness beneath his name was to have made 
her possible acceptance of him all the sweeter. 
But now a hateful impediment had intervened. 
Was he blamable in not wishing to be instructed 
by a saucy young autocrat on the subject of how 
and when he should concern himself with what 
was thus far the most serious and sacred action 
of his life? 

It was dark when he reached home, and he 
entered the little sitting-room on the ground floor 
of the cottage, throwing himself into an easy- 
chair by the large table where a lamp dimly 
burned. For a good while he did not turn up 
the lamp. He simply sat there, full of conflicting 
meditations, telling himself one minute that it 
was detestable to be coerced even into making 
the girl he loved an offer of his hand and heart, 
and the next minute that Dunstan Thirlwall, 
with his^petty machinations, was an adversary 
whom it would flatter to antagonize. Once or 
twice he smiled grimly while thinking of how 
unexpected had been this whole circumstantial 
buffet. Who could have prophesied it, even in 
a man of Dunstan’s mental build? Yet it had 
come ; it had dropped as if from the skies, or 
risen as if from the underworld. It confirmed 
his theory : we are the creatures of that force 
which remains latently and severely the same, 
whether we call it accident or fate, environment 
or luck. 

Still, as he had always clearly conceded, this 
force was in marked measure susceptible of in- 


146 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


dividual combat. He would wield against it the 
weapon which now waited in readiness. He 
would follow dear Mrs. Thirl wall’s counsel; he 
would write, and within the hour, to Eloise, 
treating her cousin’s whole preposterous conduct 
as though it were the sting of a gnat, and de- 
claring to her an honest love in language lucid 
with an honest aim. 

Spurred by this firm resolve, and conscious of 
complete victory over a resentment whose object 
tinged it with triviality, he rose and remembered 
his invalid friend upstairs. Had Whitewright 
heard his carriage- wheels on the drive outside? 
Their one servant had given no sign that she 
had heard anything, and the lad who served as 
coachman was no doubt still busy unharnessing 
and stalling the horse. 

Moncrieffe went softly upstairs and paused at 
Whitewright’s door. He listened for a few sec- 
onds, holding the door ajar. He could see a lit- 
tle way into the vague-lighted room, and pres- 
ently he heard faint sounds of regular breathing 
that made him sure his friend was asleep. 

This discovery pleased him keenly, for he 
wanted Whitewright to secure all the sleep that 
could come to him between dark and dawn. He 
stole downstairs again, and reflected in a droll 
way whether he should at once write to Eloise 
and personally place the letter in the near village 
post-office, or whether he should call Ann, the 
servant, and get her to supply him with some 
sort of a meal, even if it were made of uninvit- 
ing scraps. This hesitation between an avowal 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


147 


of love and the gratification of balked appetite 
was prosaic with all the occasional deadly prose 
of nature herself. He soon concluded, and quite 
wisely, that he could write a stronger and more 
authentic letter if he did not write it hungry and 
dinnerless. And so he looked up Ann, and in a 
little while she had prepared for him a cold but 
not unpalatable repast. Afterward he went 
back into the sitting-room, and began the letter 
to Eloise. He composed it both with heart and 
head. He asked her to be his wife and dwelt 
eloquently on the joy and honor that her assent 
would confer. At the same time he wrote in 
merciless disclosure of his own meager fortunes, 
and in earnest regret that one whom he loved so 
tenderly should be offered so humble a worldly 
place. 4 4 Still,” his pen pursued, 4 4 if you will 
share my lot with me your venture ought by no 
means to be a desperate one. Before knowing 
you the energy was strong in me to better my 
own future ; but if you will deign to blend yours 
with it and let me work for the betterment of 
both, I don’t know what pleasant miracle so in- 
spiring a partnership may lead me to accom- 
plish.” 

When he had finished his letter he sealed, di- 
rected and put a stamp upon it. Then he rose, 
turned down the sitting-room lamp, and went 
out into the hall. And so, he said to himself, the 
die was cast. He felt glad that he had cast it. 
He knew that any course except just this one 
would mean moral infirmity. He had risen above 
all heed of what Dunstan might or might not 


148 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


think. He had done that thing which is of all 
self-conquests the hardest to effect — he had put 
himself, before a person whom he despised, in 
the posture of having accepted that person’s dic- 
tation. Then there was another course that he 
might have taken — or tried to take. It would 
indeed have been a short cut to prosperity — of one 
kind ; and it might have been only a little longer 
cut to something for which prosperity of any 
kind would have proved a dire misnomer. 

Katydids and crickets were filling the autumn 
night with their plaintive yet raucous music ; it 
floated in through the open doorway of the hall. 
Moncrieffe took his hat from the rack, where his 
friend’s hung in touching suggestiveness beside 
it. A big gray moth was making mad plunges 
at the pendant lamp, and every fresh plunge 
caused the light to flicker wildly. For this rea- 
son it seemed at first like some delusion when he 
saw a man stationed at the threshold. 

“Oh, it’s you, Andrew?” he said, as he recog- 
nized one of the servants at The Terraces. 

“Yes, doctor.” The man twitched off his hat 
and touched one temple with a forefinger. Then 
he handed Moncrieffe an envelope, nimbly sprung 
from an inner pocket. 

“You didn’t drive inside, did you, Andrew?” 
said Moncrieffe, breaking the seal. He spoke 
absently; he remembered afterward that a 
strange, cold feeling, like a slow inward chill, 
crept just then from his feet to his brow. “I 
mean, I’d have heard you, in that case.” 

“No, sir; the carriage stopped at the gate out- 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


149 


side, sir. Shall I have it driven here to the 
door?” 

“X — no — yes — perhaps. I’ll see.” Moncrieffe 
was now reading the contents of the letter. It 
was from Elma Blagdon’s father, and its spell- 
ing and punctuation were not above reproach. 
It begged him, quite urgently, to come to The 
Terraces that evening. ‘ 4 Elma, ’ ’ one sentence of 
it ran, “has bean real sick with a raging hedache 
all day long, and though she says she dont need 
any doctor I guess she does, and I wish if you 
could youd come in the cariage Im sending 
along with this leter. ’ ’ 

Moncrieffe stood staring at the paper for sev- 
eral minutes. Just now, above all places, he 
wished to avoid The Terraces. 

Andrew, the perfection of a footman, stood 
with uncovered head and slender, neat-garbed 
shape. After a while the very nullity and self- 
repression of his demeanor became to Moncrieffe 
an insistent demand. 

“Oh, very well,” he suddenly said, as if wak- 
ing from a reverie, while he hastily refolded the 
letter. “It’s all right. I’ll go with you.” 


XI. 

He found Blagdon in one of the loveliest of 
many lovely rooms at The Terraces. It was 
appointed all in rose-color and silver, with slim 


150 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


mirrors at intervals along the wall, and branch- 
ing candelabra in imitation of wax-lights on 
either side of them. Only two of these modish 
chandeliers were lighted, and Blagdon was seated 
directly under one of them, beside a gilded Louis 
Quatorze table, reading the Herald. As he rose, 
his cumbrous and loose-limbed body and his sal- 
low, heavy-jawed face made a positive blot on 
the airy elegance of the room. 

“How d’ye do, doctor, how d’ye do?” he 
said, holding Moncrieffe’s hand with big fingers 
that added to their pressure gentle yet deter- 
mined oscillations. “I’m glad ye come; I’m 
ever so glad ye come. Set down. Here — right 
here. ’ ’ And he twirled a chair quickly behind 
Moncrieffe, so that its front gently smote the 
calves of his legs. When they were both seated, 
facing one another, the master of The Terraces 
recommenced : 

“That girl o’ mine ain’t well to-day; she ain’t 
well a bit. I guess I may have laid it on a 
trifle too thick when I wrote you that her head- 
ache was a rager. It ain’t quite so bad as that. 
But she’s been laying down most of the after- 
noon, and she’s fretful . . Not much,” he broke 
off, with self-corrective suddenness; “only a 
little. She’s got an ex’lent disposition, El has, 
ex’lent. She’ll make some man an ellergant 
wife.” 

Moncrieffe said “Oh, yes,” in that mood of 
polite despair which feels itself stranded flound- 
ering on the commonplace. He stared at the 
little gilt head of a cupid where it prettily bulged 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


151 


from the rim of the ornate table, and Blagdon 
continued : 

“She’ll be glad to see you, doctor. You jus’ 
tell her what you think it is, and give her some 
medicine. Even if it ain’t very pow’ful stuff, 
you understand, it may kind of act on her nerves 
and do her good.” This, coming from the 
mighty patent-medicine man, the disseminator 
of “Nervaline” and other popular compounds, 
caused his guest some secret diversion. “For I 
reckon it’s nerves, doctor, that’s mostly the mat- 
ter with her. She takes notions and freaks about 
people and things, lately, more’n I ever knew 
her to do before. Now, there’s that young Thirl- 
wall chap. She give me fits, yesterday, because 
I met him out on the road and asked him in. 
She’s took to hating him like poison.” Blagdon 
began to make a ridgy fold in the margin of the 
Herald , bending over the polished and streaked 
cinnamon of the costly table. Every little while 
he gave an underlook at his listener. “Now, in 
your case it ain’t the same at all. She’s fond 
o’ your company.” Here he shot out a wheezy, 
perturbed laugh. “I dunno how she’d like my 
saying that. P’raps I’d better take it back.” 
And he laughed again. 

“Oh, let it stay as it is, Mr. Blagdon,” said 
Moncrieffe, with a jocose air that cloaked oppo- 
site feeling. He knew that this father would 
give this daughter the moon if he could procure 
it for her. Despite all supposable longing to 
have her marry the grandest of grandees, he 
would have treated her wildest matrimonial ca- 


152 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


price with paternal leniency. It was therefore 
not a little disturbing for Moncrieffe to note the 
present drift of the old man’s talk. “You may 
be sure,” he added, still with the same false 
merriment of manner, “that I won’t betray your 
pleasant confidences.” 

Then he regretted having thus spoken, for 
Blagdon at once shook his head with a show of 
grave deprecation ; and the younger man wished 
that he had said something different, and yet 
had no idea of just what different thing, in 
the circumstances, he might or could have 
said. 

“I guess El wouldn’t mind much,” pursued 
his host, “if she did know I’d mentioned she 
liked to have you drop in here and talk to her. 
She ain’t ever been the kind that conceals her 
likings, one way or another.” He took up an 
ivory paper-knife with a beautifully carved han- 
dle, and stared into the tiny chasms between its 
pale rose- clusters, as though to find there some 
hidden cue for his next sentence. 4 4 1 — m-m-m — 
I never somehow had it in me to refuse El any- 
thing. ’ ’ Then he giggled, and the sound of his 
giggle struck him who heard it as both silly and 
pitiful. “If ’twas a question, now, for instance, 
doctor, of her getting married.” At this point 
he lifted his head and looked at Moncrieffe with 
great if brief directness. 

4 4 Yes, Mr. Blagdon, I see. You’re a most 
indulgent father. I’ve observed that before. 
You’re devoted to her in every way.” 

4 4 Hold up, doctor. Don’t go too fast. I ain’t 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


153 


devoted to her in every way. I wouldn’t see El 
marry a man I didn’t respect.” 

“Oh, of course not — of course not.” Mon- 
crieffe felt as if the legs of his chair had dropped 
an inch into the floor and then risen again. At 
the same time he analyzed his own agitation 
with that electric speed which the human soul, 
in certain peculiar straits, has power to employ. 
Here, unless he erred, was a man worth millions, 
beginning to approach him with hints that for 
countless others positioned like himself would be 
fraught with exultant surprise and stimulating 
hope. Could he sanely undervalue the material 
worth of the prospects now glimpsed to him? 

Blagdon struck the table sharply with the 
blade of the paper-knife. “I wouldn’t care if 
such a man was poor. Why should I care? All 
I got goes to her when I die, and just to keep 
her from thinking about my death I’d — well, I’d 
settle a million on El the day she was married. ’ ’ 

He leaned back in his chair, and as he did so 
a shadow from the altered light fell across his 
face. Those last words of his had had a queer 
break in them. His observer realized that the 
moment was one for him of a most pregnant 
import. 

Then he spoke on, as if from the aidful am- 
bush of that new dimness. 

“I guess I’d settle more’n a million if El 
wanted me to. I can’t refuse her anything — I 
never could, since she was a tot. All I could 
refuse, and all I would refuse, no matter how 
much she might carry on about it, would be a 


154 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


husband I didn’t think straight as a string. Not 
that I ain’t had ambitions for her; I don’t mean 
o’ the Astor and Vanderbilt kind; she’ll have 
money enough ; but I did sort of hanker after 
a son-in-law that was in high society — none o’ 
your dudes, but ’way up among the stylish 
Knickerbocker folks— a feller with say ten thou- 
sand or so a year at the least. But it don’t seem 
likely El’s going to cotton to any one like that. 
It seems as if — ” 

The speaker jerked his cumbrous frame from 
its chair, throwing both hands behind him and 
letting them stay thus, locked. He moved off a 
little potteringly, then turned and faced Mon- 
crieffe, advancing toward him while he spoke. 

“Look here, doctor, I’m a plain man, and 
though the trade that’s brought me luck has 
sometimes made me talk crooked, I always talk 
best when I talk plain. I don’t s’pose you got 
much in the world— it ain’t probable you have. 
But El likes you, and I know the girl’s down 
sick because it looks as if you was sweet some- 
where else. And I’ll say this: you needn’t think 
the money any obstacle — nor your not having 
much, neither. Of course, if the other girl’s 
fetched you so that you’d rather have her than 
an angel from heaven, all well and good. I ain’t 
very well acquainted with Miss Thirlwall, but 
the first time I set eyes on her I says to myself, 
‘There’s a dear, sweet girl if God ever made 
one.’ Now, my El ain’t a dear, sweet girl a 
bit. She’s cranky, and she’s hot-tempered, and 
she’s got a will of her own that sometimes the 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


155 


devil himself couldn’t break or bend. But she’s, 
got some first-rate qualities, too, or I guess I 
wouldn’t love her like I do love her, and that’s 
better than my own life, better than every dol- 
lar I’ve earned, better than — well, there ain’t 
any use of being blasphemious !” 

The old man stood quite still as he ended, and 
with this sorry mispronunciation which some- 
how a passionate note in his low voice made 
strangely august. 

“I ain’t going to say another word about it,” 
he went on, with a scared wildness. “I’m done 
— clean done. I guess I’ve said too much 
a’ready. I — ” He lifted one hand, waving it 
in the air as if to somebody who had stated the 
contrary and who was urging him to speak fur- 
ther. But he let the hand fall in an almost 
sheepish way as Elma glided into the room. His 
eyes, swimming to right and left, were full of 
pensive alarm. 

Elma crossed the floor and composedly shook 
hands with Moncrieffe. Her thin face was a 
trifle flushed. She wore a black satin gown, 
long-sleeved and cut high in the throat. It 
clung tightly to her arms, bust and waist, and 
sent forth little flashes of whitish darkness with 
every motion. Her body, thus vestured, had a 
kind of snaky lissomness. The copious blond 
hair was heaped high on her small head, with 
that intentional form of fluffy negligence which 
locks of their tint and dryness can best be made 
to assume. 

“What has papa said too much of already?” 


156 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


she asked Moncrieffe. He did not answer except 
by smiling, and she went swiftly on: “I do hope 
he hasn’t been telling you I amdll.” 

“Yes — that was it!” exclaimed Blagdon, only 
too anxious that she should thus believe. 

“Your coming was opportune, doctor. I dare 
say papa would have sent for you if he hadn’t 
been afraid of my wrath.” 

Blagdon sent an imploring look toward Mon- 
crieffe, which said, “In mercy’s name don’t be- 
tray me.” It was a very rapid look, but Elma’s 
eyes could be very rapid as well. Had it failed 
to elude them? 

Blagdon ambled toward a door. “I’ll leave 
you,” he said, “to tell the doctor just what a 
sick girl you’ve been.” 

After he had gone, Elma said, with cold di- 
rectness, to Moncrieffe: 

“So — I see; you didn’t come of your own ac- 
cord. Papa sent for you. ” 

“Is it so great a matter?” he replied. 

“It means much to me. You hadn’t been here 
for nearly five days ; and I supposed that when 
you came again the visit would be voluntary.” 

She let her eyes rest on his face, and he felt 
the sorcery of them now as repeatedly he had felt 
it before. Her treatment of him had been varia- 
ble in the most marked degree, and there were 
times when it had seemed to him that her ex- 
cited concession at the end of the Cassilis dinner 
had been merely a tricksy whim, born half of 
mischief and half of ennui. Once or twice he 
had left The Terraces vowing to himself that 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


157 


he would never darken its doors again. Then, 
either having broken this resolve or having met 
her elsewhere, he had found her a sunbeam of 
graciousness. Again she had acted and spoken 
in a way that had reminded him of her reckless 
methods on the Cassilis piazza. Once more she 
would be freezing, and drowsily impertinent as 
well. And so it had gone on; and meanwhile 
he had drawn his sure deductions — what man, 
so played hot-and-cold with, would not have 
drawn them? In other words he knew, without 
a shadow of vanity entering the conception, that 
she was in love with him. He knew this as he 
also knew that an atmosphere which she exhaled 
from her personality was touched for him with 
intoxication. She was like some flower whose 
perfume fascinated yet repelled. The repulsion 
was often a very vague undercurrent of con- 
sciousness — let us say of conscience besides — 
while the fascination mastered his senses and 
not seldom dizzied his reason as well. 

‘ ‘ How could any visit that I paid you be other 
than voluntary — ?” he began, but she at once 
cut him short with the curt and placid ques- 
tion: 

“Did you drive over this evening in your own 
trap?” 

He hesitated, then broke into a laugh, and 
then stopped short in his laugh while he saw 
her brow gloom. 

“I see. Papa sent for you. You might as 
well admit it.” 

“And have you scold your father cruelly?” 


158 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“I’d be more apt to scold you cruelly for try- 
ing to deceive me.” 

“Well, then; commence. After you’ve fin- 
ished I’ll scold you for neglecting your health.” 

“I had a headache, and lay down for an hour 
or two. Do you mean that I should have sent 
for you on that account?” 

“Was it so slight an affair, then?” 

She gave an irritated start, and leaned toward 
him, with warmth in her eyes but irony on her 
lips. 

“Who told you that it was not a slight affair? 
Papa, of course. This afternoon he grew — well, 
unmanageable. Querulous, I mean, and irra- 
tional. He said certain absurd things that I 
resented — that made my headache worse. The 
headache has gone, now, but something else re- 
mains. Do you guess what it is?” 

“No.” 

“Yes, you do. It is a suspicion. It is more 
than a suspicion; it is almost a certainty.” 

“And — you’ll explain* it?” 

“Pah! He’s been talking about me. He’s 
been saying things to you that he knows he 
hasn’t a shadow of right to say.” 

Moncrieffe gave his beard a vague, nervous 
little pull. “Fathers are not always such will- 
ing slaves. They have their periods of brief 
rebellion, like all other captive creatures, no 
matter how successfully yoked.” 

“That’s very pretty as satire. Did you come 
here to-night for the purpose of making me a 
prescription which should be so many grains 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


159 


of impudence, and so many more of indiffer- 
ence?” 

“Indifference!” he repeated. “You’re hor- 
ribly unjust!” As he bent toward her he felt 
the collapse of inward discipline, the outs weep 
of coerced passion. 

“You forget,” she said, drawing backward, 
“that we began to know one another on the 
most extraordinary terms. I committed a folly 
— a silliness. Anger at themselves would have 
made some girls treat you afterward with only 
the most icy reserve.” 

“I know — and you were far more sensible. 
You took a middle course. How often have I 
believed you were merely in jest that night on 
the piazza!” 

“In jest?” He saw the pink color eddying 
into her face. “You know that I wasn’t in 
jest.” She glanced at the door by which her 
father had departed. “Papa has been telling you 
that I — I like you. Perhaps he has been madly 
foolish enough to say even more than this.” 

“Oh, your poor father has only acted for the 
best.” 

“The best? How do you mean? That you 
are ‘best,’ so far as I am concerned?” 

“Yes — when you’re ill.” 

“But I’m not in the least ill.” 

“He thinks you are.” 

“Papa?” She laughed, though mirthlessly. 
“He thinks many ridiculous things about me. 
For example, he thinks I would be a success 
as a married woman.” 


160 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“Of course that will depend upon the sort of 
husband you choose.” 

“Choose! ” she repeated, with a weary sneer. 
“We women can do so much real choosing! 
And in my case — ” She stopped short. 

“Well?” He could not help questioning, 
though the very air seemed full of omens and 
perils, and he had resolved that whatever lapse 
he had lately shown should mark the end of all 
further impetuosity. While letting himself go, 
however transiently, he had with sharpness 
realized that far the greater reward must be 
gained by holding himself together. 

“In my case,” Elma continued, with a sudden 
defiant frankness, “it is money, you know — 
money. Nearly anybody whom I married they 
would say that I had chosen.” She laughed 
again, with feverish hardness. “Poor fellow! 
simply because papa’s toiled and slaved to pile 
up a certain number of dollars, he’d have to 
face untold annoyances. They’d call him a 
fortune-hunter, no matter how ill he deserved 
the name.” 

Moncrieffe was well on his guard, now. “Not 
if he were fortunate in the world himself, for ex- 
ample. ’ ’ 

“Ah,” she exclaimed, and shifted her shining 
form irritatedly in her chair, with a movement 
full of quick, native grace, despite its implica- 
tion of displeasure; “you say that to rebuke me 
for having mentioned papa’s wealth.” 

“You imagine slights,” he answered; “it’s a 
sign you are not well. May I feel your pulse?” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


161 


He put out his hand, but she folded both her own 
in her lap. “And you say that to remind me 
you are here professionally, not socially.” 

“Oh, I’m both, I’m both,” he said, in the air, 
so to speak. “How could I come one way with- 
out coming the other?” 

“I don’t need you professionally. Please be 
certain of that.” He heard, for a few seconds, 
the tapping of an unseen foot on the carpet. 

“You are very difficult to-night, Miss Elma.” 

“Why, pray? Because I will not let you feel 
my pulse?” A sudden abandonment seemed to 
possess her. “It’s been languid all day; it’s 
quicker now.” She drooped toward him, with 
a slow intensity of approach. “To speak again 
on that same subject which you just now 
snubbed me for bringing up — ” 

“I did not dream of it. I — ” 

4 4 — Which you just now snubbed me for bring- 
ing up. . . Do you think that I could marry a 
poor man without feeling that the world con- 
sidered him as worldly as itself?” 

“I will say something brutal,” thought Mon- 
crieffe, though he would not then have liked 
that his companion should feel his own pulse. 
“Best end everything that way, and get back to 
poor Magnus, who may need me by this.” 

Aloud, he therefore answered, with a playful- 
ness that he strove not to exploit forcedly : 

“Any poor man whom you honored by marry- 
ing him would have to face his adversity and 
find compensation for it in your affection.” 

“Mere paltry trifling!” she cried with pettish 


162 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


affront, and sprang from her seat, hurrying to 
the further end of the room. Here she stood, 
her head lowered and her form distantly vague. 

Moncrieffe suppressed a troubled sigh. Sud- 
den longing beset him to join her and speak 
kindly words. He knew that her action had 
been frivolous and undignified, but this knowl- 
edge had no concern with his desire. It was 
patent to him now, as it had been patent at 
other times, that she craved from him some 
self-surrendering confession. He could have 
made that confession, and with a certain kind 
of tumultuous sincerity, if he had not resolutely 
held before his inward vision the sanctity of a 
higher demand upon his emotional life. 

“ I will not,” he said to himself; “ I will not! 
I believe in the force that drags men down, but 
I keep my faith in the will that can fight on and 
on till harsh odds are too much for it.” 

He rose, and drew out his watch. He knew 
well that in this stronger light she could see his 
every movement. 

“My friend, White wright,” he said, “has 
been dangerously ill. He is better, now, but 
I don’t wish to leave him alone longer than I 
can help. So — good evening. I trust your 
headache will quite have vanished by to-mor- 
row. I’ll go, with your permission, to the 
stables mj^self, and find the man who drove 
me over. In that way I can perhaps get back 
quicker to White wright, and as there is really 
every reason that I should see him during the 
next hour, I — ” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


163 


‘ ‘ Wait, please. Don’t go quite yet.” 

She came quickly up to his side as she spoke. 
Her face was very earnest and serious; some in- 
tangible change in its lines — or perhaps its new 
and surprising pallor — made it beautiful to him. 
In her look and air was a wild and wistful tender- 
ness, and yet somehow a certain firmness as well. 

“This is to be our last meeting,” she said, 
“for a very long time. We are going abroad, 
papa and I. We shall sail quite soon, leaving 
everything for the servants to stow away and 
lock up. We shall be gone at least three years. 
We mean to move round the world, but not in 
the galloping way most people prefer. We shall 
move slowly. Perhaps when I again see you 
many changes may have occurred. I hope, 
with all my heart, that for yourself they may 
bring no disaster.” 

As the first thrills of Moncrieffe’s amazement 
died, he told himself that he was being played 
some grotesque trick. 

“Your father said nothing,” he began, “of 
this speedy intended departure.” 

“Papa has been wanting for a long time to go. 
I’ve merely to lift a finger.” 

“And you have lifted one? To-day, I mean 
— yesterday?” 

“I’ve lifted it.” 

“I see; you’re going to lift it. You’re going 
to do so because — ” 

He stopped short, and she steadily looked at 
him. “I’m going to do so because I want to put 
into my life a new element— forgetfulness. ” 


104 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


This was no trick, no subterfuge, no mas- 
querade. Her words rang truth, low as they 
fell, and her air exhaled it. 

“Forgetfulness of whom?” He had no sooner 
let the question slip its leash than he could have 
cursed himself for doing so. 

“Forgetfulness of you,” she said. 

Moncrieffe half turned from her. He was 
fearfully moved. He wondered if she would go 
on speaking; he said to himself that it would 
be best for him to hurry away. Fear, literal 
fear, had made him turn like this ; nor did the 
fear vanish as her modulated voice, without a 
faintest echo of its old resonance or discord, 
smote upon the silence. 

“Yes, it’s far better for me to go. I shall 
hate and despise myself ; I shall think it all over 
with scorn and loathing of my conduct. But of 
one thing I shall be sure: you’ll keep it all a 
secret, a profound secret. And some day (who 
knows?) we’ll meet and talk of it together, and 
I’ll laugh about it, and perhaps not feel so bit- 
terly ashamed, either. I’m bitterly ashamed 
now, and yet — and yet I spoke as I did ! Can 
you reconcile those two things? I can reconcile 
them, for I know that the little which is good 
in me has been ruined by indulgence, and the 
greater part which is wayward and perverse in 
me has been made more so by the same bad 
means. I — I should not be judged as others are 
judged, and I pray you not to deal so with me 
hereafter. Nothing has ever been denied me 
that I have cared to call my own. I’ve had no 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


165 


trials, like other girls ; I was too young even to 
grieve at my mother’s death. And therefore 
you should use me kindly in your thoughts. . . 
Go, just as you said you would go; it is better. 
You can find a carriage at the stables. I don’t 
want you to see papa, and so I’ll ask you to take 
a door here at the back of this room, which will 
lead you into a rear hall, and from that you can 
go straight out on the lawn. Come, now, give 
me your hand for good-by, and let this be the 
last good-by, and God bless you, Basil Mon- 
crieffe — God bless you and prosper you!” 

He turned, then. There had been tears in her 
voice, toward the last, but her eyes did not show 
a trace of them. He perceived, as he looked at 
her, that she was spectrally pale. 

“Come,” she repeated, and put out her hand. 

“I — I haven’t my hat,” he stammered for- 
lornly. Every nerve in his frame was quivering. 
He pitied her supremely, and thi$ compassionate 
fervor reacted in a sense of self-reproach at his 
own merciless posture. Danger was in every 
breath he now drew, but the outlines of dread 
had grown blurred and those of sentiment, of 
physical lure, burned forth in their place. 

She laughed brokenly at the commonplace 
about the hat. “I’ll ring and have it brought 
you,” she said. She made a step toward one of 
the electric bells on the wall. 

He had not taken the hand that she had offered 
him, but he caught it now, slipping forward as 
if to thwart her intended summons. 

“Don’t ring yet. I — ” 


166 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


They both stood quite still, staring into one 
another’s eyes. She let him hold her hand. Its 
contact pained him with the leaping fire that it 
shot into his blood. 

Her eyes did not leave his own, but she shook 
her head with quick negative motions. 

“It is better; it is best,” she murmured. 

“Not,” he urged, “if I tell you that I love 
you.” 

“You do not love me.” 

“Yes — yes! The truth broke on me when I 
heard you say you were going away like that — 
going away for a long time.” He stooped and 
put his lips to her hand. Then he threw away 
the hand almost with violence, and caught her to 
his breast. 

She struggled with him, while her tears came 
in a tempest. 

“You don’t love me as you love 7ier.” 

“Her? Whom?” 

“Eloise Thirl wad.” 

“No — it’s you, not she? Don’t you believe 
me, Elma? Don’t you believe me well enough 
to be my wife?” 

‘ 4 Y our wife ! your wif e ! ” 

He just heard the words, for ravaging sobs 
racked her. But he heard them clearly, and 
heard also the glad eagerness of their accent, 
which not even her stormy tremors could veil. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


167 


XII. 


Whitewright was still sleeping placidly 
when his friend paused at his door, about two 
hours later. Listening for a little while, Mon- 
crieffe at length crossed the hall and entered his 
own chamber. He lighted a lamp and seated 
himself beside it. Then he took a match and 
lighted it by the heat of the lamp-chimney and 
drew forth the letter to Eloise and fired one cor- 
ner of the envelope. He held the thick, stiff 
square of paper between thumb and finger, watch- 
ing the flames eat their bluish-yellow way into 
the folds and make their charred edges sag 
apart. On the table was a small brass dish for 
holding pens, and into this he soon dropped the 
blackening yet flamy mass. Presently nothing 
but ashes remained, interlaced with tiny chain* 
lightnings. Then these died away, and every- 
thing left of the letter which had breathed so 
much vital love was a brittle ruin that two or 
three taps of the finger could turn into dark and 
weightless dust. 

He sat for a long time quite still, there in the 
lamplight. 4 ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” he 
said, aloud yet faintly, not knowing that he said 
it. At length he rose, undressed, went to bed, 
slept tiredly for an hour, remained awake for 
two hours more, slept again, and so on till it 
was time to get up. 

When dressed he went into Whitewright’s 


168 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


room and played there the part of both physician 
and nurse. The sick man was feeble and ner- 
vous, as morning usually finds all consumptives. 
It was not until later, when his breakfast had 
been brought him and he had eaten it propped 
up on pillows, that he suddenly asked : 

“Ob, Basil, how about last evening? I — I 

was asleep, 'wasn’t I, when you got back?” 

“Sound asleep.” 

“And, tell me, my boy, had you a pleasant 
time?” He struck out a little eagerly at first, 
and then let his voice drop, as though he had 
intended to say one thing and had afterward 
changed it to another. 

“Oh, yes; very pleasant,” replied Moncrieffe. 
He saw that his friend’s morning languor laid a 
veto on his usual volubility, and could not regret 
that this was true. Of course a clean breast 
must be made that day ; but meanwhile procras- 
tination had its decisive charms. He hated the 
shock that his news must deal, and from the 
medical point of view rather feared it. 

At the same time he intended no disclosure of 
remorse and contrition. A certain bravado filled 
him, though he would not have called it bravado 
in any sense. Like nearly all of us when we 
have done something that may have a shabby 
look to our moral vision yet wears a smart and 
gilded one to that of our material prosperity, he 
found he was greeted by a positive orchestra 
of self-applause. It was third-rate music, and 
those spiritual powers that could have made bet- 
ter had stolen quite away. Indeed, it all came 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


1G9 


to this with the man: feeling that life had now- 
shut him off from healthier and higher breathing- 
spaces, he had the stubborn impulse to insist 
within his own soul that he was quite content 
with an inferior atmospheric makeshift. 

And yet, at the same time, a deeper genuine 
mood of lament and revolt underlay this more 
artificial one. Could it be denied that what he 
had done was really of his own doing? Had 
not a potency stronger than his own will thralled 
that will and bent it to despotic and irresistible 
uses? Even at the last he might have rebelled; 
but this very potency had tinged concession with 
lure. Experience had simply confirmed his old 
belief. He himself had fallen a victim to that 
same invisible urgency of circumstance by which 
we have heard him assert that every human be- 
ing is menaced from birth to death. Reviewing 
the events of the previous night now when a 
brilliant autumn sun shone on them with inex- 
orable search, he found that conscience was sin- 
gularly quiescent. Regret, however, was acutely 
active, and the thought of that never-sent, never- 
to-be-sent letter had already become a ghost 
which no triumphant calm about the worldly 
thrift and ease of his future could securely lay. 

A little while after breakfast he went out of 
doors and walked up and down the drive in front 
of the cottage. During the night a fresh tingle 
of frost had won new glories from the foliage. 
A few gossamers, brightly bediamonded, yet 
sparkled on the dead-green grass. The sky was 
one crystal vacuum, greenish-blue, with a faint 


170 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


ring of mist at the horizon, tinted like the fur on 
a ripe peach. Birds in the rich-dyed trees or 
shrubs twittered their timid allegros. A throng 
of hawks flew over the lawn with a keen cry 
from its airy and wide-winged caravan. 

The radiance of the morning was for Mon- 
crieffe full of mingled elation and mockery. 
“Everything is altered with me now,” he said 
to himself. “I have turned a new page in the 
book of life. What I like about the change is 
its promise of distinction, luxury, power. What 
I deplore about it is that its occurrence should 
have been a matter so broadly apart from my one 
deliberate volition. And then there must always 
be those memories — those memories! . . .” 

He started, looking toward the front gate. A 
carriage had stopped there. He saw a familiar 
face, and for a moment his brain swam. Then 
the giddiness passed as quickly as it had come. 
He went down and met Mrs. Thirlwall, who by 
this time had descended from the carriage. 

“Why didn’t you drive inside?” he said, 
while he took her hand. 

She looked at him, and he saw instantly that 
she was both pale and discomposed. 

“I — I didn’t think to tell the man. I — I’ve 
been getting some things in the village. I 
merely stopped here to — to find out if Mr. 
White wright was better.” 

They walked up the path together. “Yes, he’s 
doing nicely,” said Moncrieffe. 

As they moved along, side by side, she turned 
and lightly laid her gloved hand on his wrist. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


m 


“I’m so very sorry for what happened yester- 
day! It seems to me that I was greatly at 
fault. I shouldn’t have sent you away like that ; 
I should have let you stay and — and face the 
music. It would have been horribly discordant 
music, but your going struck me afterward as 
something with a comic coarseness about it ; and 
that was so very far from what I had intended ! 
But you have forgiven ! Do tell me that you 
have quite forgiven!” Her hand still rested on 
his wrist, and now for the first time he felt the 
clasp and downward pressure of its fingers. “I 
stopped there at the gate as much for that as to 
learn about your poor friend — though I wouldn’t 
for the world have him dream so.” 

They were entering the house as Moncrieffe 
spoke. This was all torture to him. He felt 
as if a tangling net were about his feet and the 
least step he made might land him on his knees. 
And on his knees, forsooth, before this dearest 
of women, he might well be flung. There 
seemed the hollowest irony in her asking his 
forgiveness ! He could scarcely keep his voice 
collected as he answered her. 

“There could not be any such question between 
us. I hate to have you fancy I thought ill of 
you for sending me away.” 

“Dunstan thought ill of me. Oh, we had a 
wretched scene after you left. And the course 
he took was so unpardonable ! If he loved that 
girl it would be different ; we can condone almost 
any folly when the natural jealousy of a lover 
commits it. But with Dunstan, though he is 


172 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


my own boy and though I love him even better 
because of his faults than if he were free from 
a single one, I feel certain that ambition of the 
coldest kind has predominated. He has no more 
sentiment for that girl than I have for this par- 
asol. But he’s bent on the madness of marrying 
her — you know why. And he’s grown afraid of 
you. I told him yesterday that he insulted you 
by merely suspecting that you could make a 
marriage in the same sordid spirit as he ; I told 
him that if you became Elma Blagdon’s husband 
it would be because of herself and not her dol- 
lars. He replied that I had fallen in love with 
you and could believe only that you were perfec- 
tion. I said that he was quite right — that I had 
been so much in love with you for a good while, 
now, as to find myself wishing morning, noon 
and night that I only had a son with half your 
handsome qualities. I’m sure that I gave him 
a sharp surprise after you left. I reminded him 
of several occasions when he had flouted my au- 
thority as his mother, but I assured him that in 
this instance he had put my forbearance to a 
final test. He watched me, at first, in anger and 
astonishment; these soon changed to alarm. I 
had in turn no anger, but I was excessively firm. 
I recalled to his mind that my life-interest in the 
family estate made him dependent upon me for 
every dollar he could get from it. And I threat- 
ened not to give him one more, from then till my 
death, if he continued to distress Eloise or my- 
self by the course he had chosen. I even went 
further; I made it a point that he should also 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


173 


cease to trouble you in the same abhorrent way. 
It was hard for me to take such a stand — me, 
his mother, loving him as I do and always must ! 
But I went on ; I was relentless — that’s why I 
sent you away, my friend ; I felt that the time 
had come for me to be relentless.” 

“Yes — I understand,” Moncrieffe faltered. 

“I told him that I would rent Greendingle 
(which I can do; though I cannot, under the 
terms of his father’s will, sell it) and would go 
and live elsewhere with Anita and Eloise. He 
doubted me, at first, and almost dared me to 
carry out my programme of retaliation. We 
stood in the dining-room together; your chair 
had been set for you, your cover laid. I pointed 
to them as evidence of the shocking disturbance 
he had wrought, and I refused to seat myself at 
the table — I refused ever again to seat myself 
there in his company — until he fully acceded to 
my terms. . . Well, he was terribly obstinate, 
and an hour, two hours passed, before he would 
relent. Then his surrender was ungracious, but 
complete. We sat down to a late dinner, which 
was also horribly overdone. I had insisted on 
Eloise coming down, and poor little Anita, 
whimpering from unappeased hunger, was also 
included. She had expected to dine at the elbow 
of a certain gentleman whom she adores, for 
reasons best known to his charming self, and her 
miniature little majesty was in consequenoe all 
the more fretful. We made the most ghastly 
family party. But I had won my victory. Only, 
this mother’s heart of mine kept aching for a 


174 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


tender word from Dunstan. I can’t forget how 
affectionate a boy he was, and how recent years 
have hardened, almost petrified him. Nothing 
could ever really estrange him from me ; I won- 
dered afterward at his believing that I ever 
could use my widow’s rights against him in that 
merciless manner. . . But now it’s all to be 
plainer sailing for us,” she went on, with her 
returning smile, at once brilliant and sad, girl- 
ish and matronly — the most purely lovable smile, 
Moncrieffe often in later years told himself, that 
he had ever seen on the lips of woman. “I — I 
thought you might write me to-day. Perhaps 
you intended to write. But, anyway, you will 
not let Dunstan keep you from Greendingle. I 
know it may not be pleasant for you to meet 
him, but believe me when I promise you that he 
will not make it more difficult than a mere inter- 
change of salutes. And then, very possibly, you 
and he may net be brought face to face there for 
a long, long time. So you will come, will you 
not? You’ll come soon, too? I’ve told you of 
my victory ; but it will always be to me a defeat 
unless I can welcome you — Eloise and I can 
welcome you — there once again beneath our own 
roof!” 

“I’ll come again — of course,” he said. The 
staircase was close by, and he added, in another 
instant : ‘ ‘ Please let me go up first and tell Mag- 
nus you’re here. He’ll be so glad.” 

Springing upstairs and speaking genially was 
a way to escape the more detailed answer which 
those gentle eyes demanded of him. When Mrs. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


175 


Thirlwall presently paused at Whitewright’s bed- 
side he slipped from the room and spent a half- 
hour pacing up and down the narrow lower 
hall. 

He could hear them talking in the room 
above; he could note the variations of their 
voices. No doubt they were talking of him. 
They both admired him — both believed in him ; 
that he knew! 

At length he went upstairs again. Mrs. 
Thirlwall was just taking her leave of the sick 
man. “Ah, here is Pythias,” she smiled, “or is 
it Damon — which ? ’ ’ Moncrieff e made some light 
answer ; then Whitewright spoke in his cheerful 
way from the bed. Then Mrs. Thirlwall blamed 
herself for having made so long a visit, and 
moved toward the door, diffusing sympathy and 
kindliness from both look and speech. 

“Her visit must be longer still,” said Mon- 
crieff e to his own perturbed spirit as he again 
passed downstairs. In the hall he waited for 
her. When she had descended and joined him 
he pointed to the doorway of the sitting-room. 

“Will you please come in here for a little 
while, Mrs. Thirlwall? I’ve something that I 
must say to you.” 

“Oh, what a pretty room!” she exclaimed, 
crossing the threshold. “Whose taste brought 
these lovely colors together? Yours or — ?” 

She ceased, seeing his pained, set face. “Ah! 
you want to tell me that you do not forgive me 
for yesterday, after all!” 

“No, no. Not that.” 


176 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“Then you’ve made up your mind never to 
come again to Greendingle because of Dunstan’s 
behavior. But pray remember that he is not 
master there. He thought that he was ; we had 
a civil war; he was in hot rebellion, and now, 
though neither proscribed nor beheaded, he is 
permanently quiescent. And Eloise will be so 
delighted to have you come again! Now, as 
for Dunstan, can’t we arrange that you and he 
should not meet at all — that is, not for the pres- 
ent? I wouldn’t for the world have any house- 
hold avoidance — at least I wouldn’t endure any 
in him . . . Oh, I’ve become a terrible martinet 
toward him since that eventful yesterday ! But 
I chance to know that he’s going to town to- 
morrow morning, and will be gone all day. 
What if you drove out to us for luncheon to- 
morrow? Can your professional engagements 
spare you? I rejoice to learn that they’re in- 
creasing every week. . . Or can your poor 
friend spare you? I rejoice to see that he’s 
doing so nicely, though of course lung- trouble at 
his age can’t mean old bones, as one says, poor, 
dear, delightful fellow that he is!” 

Often when we are agonizingly preoccupied 
by certain thoughts, others, obstinate and irrel- 
evant, will thrust them aside. Moncrieffe, in 
his desperate disarray, now mused: “When a 
thoroughly charming woman has passed the age 
of forty, and still remains thoroughly charming, 
what in the whole range of human association 
can be more attractive?” 

“You don’t answer me, my friend,” said Mrs. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


177 


Thirlwall, breaking silence. She had waited for 
his answer, and he was only too well aware that 
she had waited. Now it indeed came his turn 
to break silence. 

He did so in what seemed to himself a wildly 
plunging way. “It’s distressing to me that I 
should shock you. As one who has advised you 
to shun all agitation, I — I feel now that I am 
wretchedly inconsistent.” 

He sank, with a helpless gesture, on a near 
lounge. Instantly she was seated there at his 
side. 

“You are ill, then? I suspected it. Shock 
me! Why, you don’t mean — ” 

“Last night,” he broke in, steadying his voice 
as best he could, “I received a letter from Mr. 
Blagdon. It was given me by a messenger after 
I had got home here.” 

“Yes. Well?” 

He spoke on and on. When he came to a 
special point in his narration, these were his 
exact words: 

“Elma’s entrance into the room had surprised 
me. I went there, as I have told you, in a 
purely professional role. She was — capricious, 
as she always is. She would not talk of her 
headache, and so — we talked of other things. It 
was not a very long conversation, but to both of 
us it was most pregnant, most decisive. I — I 
asked her to marry me and she did me the honor 
of consenting to become my wife.” 

“You’re engaged, then, to Elma Blagdon! 

Your 


178 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


The words came low and swift. Mrs. Thirlwall 
had shot np from the lounge as she spoke them. 
Her sweet face was full of sorrow, yet it had not 
an indignant gleam. She moved, a little flutter- 
edly, toward one of the windows, with its clear- 
cut view of gay-stained leafage and crystalline 
autumn sky. 

She was duskily pale as she swept round and 
re-faced him. He had risen also, by this time. 
Knowing how this woman loved her niece, re- 
alizing how her recent yet deep affection for 
himself had given her joyful hopes of that niece’s 
honorable and happy marriage to himself, he 
stood prepared for some turbulent tirade of re- 
proach. 

But none came. “You don’t love Elma Blag- 
don,” came instead, spoken with infinite regret. 
“You don’t love her, and your marriage will 
never — ” 

“Mrs. Thirlwall!” 

She had tottered slightly, and lifted both hands 
to her face. Moncrieffe put his arms about her 
and led her back to the lounge. 

“Lie down,” he urged. “Pray do.” 

“No — no. It was that old weakness again, 
but not so very severe this time — not so very 
severe. ’ ’ 

“I feared something of this sort if I told you. 
And yet I couldn’t keep it from you, of course.” 

“No; you were quite right.” The color was 
coming back to her whitened cheeks ; and as she 
looked at him and smiled the smile had a deli- 
cious auroral charm. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


179 


“It did shock me — and savagely, too. But I 
should not have spoken like that. There is much 
in Elma that one might easily love.” 

“It would be hard for you to find any one 
quite unlovable,” he said; and the words were 
scarcely spoken when their peculiar infelicity 
grew plain to him. . . But in any case, how 
bitterly false and burdensome was his present 
position ! He had told this woman something ; 
decency and honor had forbidden him to tell her 
more. But to have made her in any sense his 
confidante tried him like the most racking ordeal. 
If she had upbraided him the whole declaration 
would have been so much easier ; it was her ex- 
quisite clemency that both disarmed and afflicted 
him. 

“I am disappointed,” she said, low- voiced and 
as if half to herself. 4 4 1 had wanted it all to end so 
differently ! I had thought of a safe and serene 
future for Eloise. I believed that you and she — 
But oh, there are things that it becomes impos- 
sible to talk of!” 

“Impossible,” Moncrieffe repeated, with 
drooped head. In another minute he lifted his 
eyes to hers and saw that their silvery blue was 
brimming equally with divination and charity. 

“My poor boy!” she said, with tones of throb- 
bing tenderness. “I thought that I had got to 
know you very well ; and I am sure that I have 
not erred in my estimate of you. A great deal 
is clear to me that you have not spoken. I can 
imagine— I can imagine! How it changes 
everything — how it flurries one!” Then her 


180 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


tears came, bat with no tumultuous flow. She 
wept tranquilly, and only for a brief while. “You 
know my devotion to poor, darling Eloise. It is 
so hard for me to realize that you should prefer — 
Yo, no, no!” she broke off, with a sudden soft 
vehemence, rising and drying her eyes. “You 
did not prefer ! I understand! You were forced 
into it. You did it before you were quite aware 
that it had really been done. 5 ’ 

“I — I ought not to grant that,” faltered Mon- 
crieffe, with miserable disclaimer. He was pull- 
ing at his beard with a hand that perceptibly 
shook. 

“Still,” she persisted, “I grasp just what you 
mean. I see your position.” 

“Oh,” he broke out, forlornly, “you see it 
with far too lenient eyes ! ’ ’ 

“I see it as it is. I strive never to misjudge 
people. She’s a fascinating girl; she’s a girl of 
strange personal force. I knew, over a month 
ago, that she cared for you immensely. She told 
it me herself one morning when she had driven 
over to G-reendingle. That is, she told it by not 
telling it— by trying to hide it as much as she 
could. . . Well, well, you’re making what the 
world will call a splendid match.” 

“And what you call a wretched one.” 

“I — I don’t call it anything. I can’t, yet. I’ll 
wait and see. I’ll not congratulate you till I 
have waited, till I have seen.” 

“ And meanwhile, ” burst ungovernably from 
Moncrieffe, “you’ll endeavor not to despise 
me!” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


181 


She watched him with quiet fixity till his eyes 
drooped. 

“Do you despise yourself?” she asked, very 
mildly. 

“No. And if I did I should despise myself 
still more for telling you so.” 

“My friend, my friend, that means you are in 
great trouble!” 

“And if I am! You, of all persons living, 
should be the last to feel for me!” 

“Then let me show myself the first who does 
feel for you !” she answered, with a rich and in- 
stant eagerness, while she stretched out both 
hands toward him. “If I can do anything — 
anything to help you, command me ! And re- 
member, it will be all for yourself. It will be 
disinterested ; it will be — ’ ’ 

“You’re a saint! You’re more — you’re an 
angel!” he answered, catching one of her hands 
and pressing it to his lips. “But now — now. . .” 
And he dropped her hand as though it were 
something frangible and sacred. . . “Now des- 
tiny has me in full mid-stream, and is bearing 
me straight onward, God help me! . . His 
voice broke, then. 

“God b less you ! ” she said, and her lips lightly 
touched his brow. 

“How can Dunstan Thirlwall be what he is,” 
swept through Moncrieffe’s mind, “with this in- 
comparable woman for his mother?” 


182 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


XIII. 

Later he regretted her goodness. He would 
have liked it better if she had stung him with 
censure. He knew, that morning, when he took 
her to her carriage and received from her a fare- 
well pressure of the hand, that he had thrust a 
dagger into her benign bosom. It had not been 
merely that she wanted to marry her beloved 
Eloise to an honorable man whose name would 
cover the girl’s pathetic namelessness. It had 
been that she wanted to make him, Basil Mon- 
crieffe, the husband of Eloise because she excep- 
tionally prized and trusted him. And Mon- 
crieffe, who dreaded the result to her health, 
dreaded it in like way to her happiness. Her 
presence kept haunting him with a more accusa- 
tive persistence than did that of Eloise. At the 
same time he stoutly resented all compunctious 
monitions. He held to his faith in having been 
pushed where he now stood. But it was hard to 
play martyr, he soon found, even in his most 
solitary musings. Elma dawned upon him twice 
a day, and always with demure bewitchment. 
What new and delightful self had she revealed? 
Whither had flown her madcap humors? Never 
was there a more duteous and yielding daughter, 
never a sweetheart more modest and fond. 

The engagement soon transpired, and all River- 
view shouted with surprise. The news flew from 
one home to another, and pity for “poor old 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


183 


Blagdon” kept continual pace with it. But 
when Mr. Blagdon was afterward seen by this 
or that commiserator, his demeanor did not look 
at all touching. He seemed, indeed, to have 
found a son-in-law of whom he was particularly 
proud. 

“They certainly do make a handsome couple, ” 
said Mrs. Bedchambers, at one of the Riverview 
ladies’ luncheons. Like nearly everybody else, 
she thought it a most unfortunate affair. The 
whole patrician settlement tingled with dissat- 
isfaction. If Dunstan Thirlwall had been the 
chosen swain, nothing could have seemed more 
appropriate. But an heiress like that giving 
herself to a nobody, and a newcomer as well! 
There were surely twenty-five mothers dwelling 
here beside the radiant Hudson, who had 
dreamed ambitious dreams for their sons ; and 
through these dreams the shape of Elma had 
gone trippingly, with her unconventionalisms 
and audacities. 

“J think them a most strikingly handsome 
couple,” said Mrs. Cassilis, who was delighted 
at the match and whose tormenting ghost was 
now comfortably laid. 

“Heavens, my dear,” said a certain Mrs. Pom- 
eroy Perkins, a lady with four somewhat raw- 
boned sons, “you can’t mean that you think her 
in the faintest way pretty /” 

“Her engagement has made her so, ” said Mrs. 
Cassilis. “She has that look an engaged girl 
often gets, even when she’s quite plain.” 

“Well,” said another lady, the devoted mother 


184 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


of two rather engaging and enterprising sons, 
“ she’ll lead him a dance before she’s done with 
him ! For my part, I shouldn’t be overwhelmed 
with wonder to hear that she had thrown him 
over any day!” 

Mrs. Cassilis colored, and thought of her re- 
imperiled Pinckney. “Oh, my dear Mrs. Pow- 
erscourt ! She’s perfectly crazy about him. Have 
you happened to see them together?” 

“No,” returned the lady, with her chin at an 
unwonted elevation. ‘ ‘ The truth is — er — I have- 
n’t called since it was announced. I suppose I 
must; but that girl is such a barbarian!” 

Here a plump little lady whom everybody 
thought keenly vulgar but whose vulgarity was 
accepted and put up with because she had a 
Knickerbocker name and about thirty thousand 
a year behind it, said with a sort of rollicking 
candor : 

“Oh, pooh! Elma’s got her weak points. 
She’s often a pill to swallow, but then it’s a 
gilded pill. And so, for my part, I confess I’m 
furious that my Jimmy didn’t get her. She was 
dreadfully nice to him all through June, and just 
before her present divinity arrived she dropped 
him. I’m so glad it was just before. Jimmy 
and Dunstan Thirlwall were then running al- 
most neck-and-neck. If Dunstan had come in 
first I should have died with envy. But this 
dark horse wins the race, so I feel considerably 
less flattened out. ’ ’ 

“How infamously tasteless and tactless Kate 
Van Tassell can be!” whispered Mrs. Powers- 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


185 


court to Mrs. Bedchambers. “I’m not surprised 
that she wanted such a hoydenish daughter-in- 
law as Elma Blagdon. They would certainly 
have been congenial. ” 

“I can’t believe,” said Mrs. Bedchambers, 
rather airily to Mrs. Yan Tassell, “that your 
dark horse, as you so — m-m — forcibly describe 
Dr. Moncrieffe, will win at the last. I’m simply 
waiting to hear that she’s changed her mind, or 
else that her tantrums and capers have forced 
him to change his.” 

This view of the engagement was not unlike 
that of Magnus White wright. For a while Mon- 
crieffe had waited, dreading to tell him the truth. 
Then he had done so with a gradual tenderness 
of recital, beginning with vague statements and 
finally seizing in both hands, as it were, the sus- 
picion that he had created, and turning it per- 
emptorily into assurance. 

Whitewright was up and about, by this. He 
and his friend were together in the sitting-room 
downstairs. Outside the weather still stayed 
fresh and sunny, but even the briefest open-air 
walk was yet forbidden the invalid. 

“So you did it — so you did it!” Whitewright 
murmured, slowly nodding, as if in somber so- 
liloquy. 

Moncrieffe got up from his chair with a great 
relieved sigh. He stood beside the table near 
which his friend sat, enmantled by two protec- 
tive shawls, one of which he had just tossed 
almost wholly aside. 

“I’ve told you everything, now, Magnus. 


186 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


You’re the only being on earth to whom I would 
have told everything, like this.” 

“Yes. It’s all plain. She was in love with 
you and she said so. You — taken # at a weak 
moment, a moment when the insolence of Dun- 
stan still rankled in your breast — ensnared your- 
self in her silken meshes. She threw them 
boldly, but there was skill in her boldness, 
too. Otherwise you would have cut loose 
then and there. Now you think you can’t 
cut loose.” 

“I know I can’t.” 

“But you would like to.” 

“Magnus, this is brutal of you.” 

“My boy,” laughed Whitewright, gloomily, 
“the whole affair is brutal. You don’t care for 
her as men should care for the women they 
marry. You’re in love with Eloise Thirl wall. 
Yours isn’t the temperament to be appeased or 
submerged by luxurious materialism. Three 
valets to prepare your bath and three more to 
bow you into your breakfast-room will not sat- 
isfy a certain obdurate heartache. You can feed 
your pride to gluttony, but only at the cost of a 
spiritual starvation. ’ ’ 

Moncrieffe took a book from the table and be- 
gan to turn its pages with unseeing eyes. 

“Is this,” he muttered, “only the commence- 
ment of your scolding?” 

“I don’t scold you; I’m not an old woman; I 
warn you, while there’s yet time.” 

“Time!” Closing the book with a sort of 
snap, Moncrieffe flung it back on the table. “In 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


187 


Heaven’s name what form does your ‘warning’ 
take?” 

“This: Break the whole thing off at once. 
You can’t sell yourself without future anguish. ” 

“I haven’t sold myself ! It’s atrocious for you 
to put it like that! I have simply — ” 

“You have simply, my very dear Basil, let 
yourself be bought. It all amounts, as far as 
your morrows are concerned, to precisely the 
same issue.” 

“What you lack in powers of prophecy you 
can certainly make up by emphasis of declara- 
tion. Now, the truth is, I haven’t sold myself, 
and I haven’t let myself be bought. I am in 
love with Elma Blagdon — ” 

“Basil!” 

“It’s true. It’s true as that I’m not in love 
with her as I’m in love with Eloise Thirl- 
wall.” 

“And you call both feelings — love?” 

“Incontestably. Ah, Magnus, there was never 
a sillier fallacy than that which affirms a man 
cannot love two women at once— or three, either, 
for that matter, or even four.” 

“Where would you draw your line?” asked 
White wright. “At fifty or a hundred?” 

“At the capacity of the individual. It differs 
in different men. But few of us are not polyg- 
amists at heart, deny it as stoutly as we may.” 

“I didn’t know you hankered after a harem.” 

“I! The thought of one is loathsome to me — 
and you know it. Perfect marriage, for a man, 
is the selection of that one woman who pleases 


188 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


him best above all others. But it is nonsense to 
claim that only one can please him. ,, 

“And so you believe yourself to have made a 
choice that is not perilous, is not menacing to 
your peace hereafter?” 

“I made no choice.” 

“How can you say that, Basil?” 

“I made no choice. I insist upon it that I 
made none. I went that night to Greendingle, 
Magnus, with the firm intent of offering myself 
to Eloise. You know what happened there; I’ve 
told you everything. Afterward, returning here 
I received that letter from The Terraces. My 
visit there was professional. What occurred 
later, on my arrival at The Terraces, you also 
know — in part.” 

“In part — yes. And you would have me be- 
lieve that you then became non-responsible for 
your actions and words?” 

“Yes.” Here Moncrieffe threw himself back 
into the chair that he had quitted. “I swear to 
you, Magnus, that I was no longer, in the vaguest 
sense, a free agent.” 

White wright impatiently jostled a fold of 
shawl from one shoulder. A bitter smile crept 
between his pale lips, that so many genial smiles 
had lighted. 

“Where, then, was your will, Basil? Would 
you have me credit the old tales of the sorcer- 
esses and witch-women?” 

Moncrieffe nodded grimly. “They were, no 
doubt, tales founded on fact.” He put one leg 
over its neighbor knee, and leaned forward, 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


189 


staring into his friend’s face with intensest 
fervor. “Magnus, Magnus, a whirlwind of fate 
caught me and did with me what it chose ! Only 
a little while ago I told you my belief in that 
outside force which may seize upon us and work 
its will with us, whether we rebel or accede. I 
did not then dream that I was so near to being 
grasped and overthrown, myself, in just this 
despotic way. But I swear to you that I be- 
came powerless. You . . you have not forgot- 
ten,” he added, with a sudden hesitancy and 
hoarseness, “that letter which I told you . . I 
had . . written Eloise . . just after my return 
from Greendingle.” 

“And which you burned,” came White- 
wright’s quick reply, with an inflection of 
the most uncharacteristic harshness. “Which 
you burned, Basil, on your final home-coming. 
Ah, you were not powerless when you did 
that!” 

“Good Heavens! you would not have had me 
send it, after — ?” 

“I would have had you keep it. Granted that 
this whirlwind did sweep you away. Whirl- 
winds often leave their survivors, as in your 
case, the strength to repair what injuries they 
have inflicted. The next morning you could 
have written Elma Blagdon another letter — ” 

“Magnus!” 

“Or, better, you could have gone to see her — 
to see her father — ” 

“Oh, Magnus! ” 

“Anything, anything would have been pref- 


190 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


erable to your having let this so- termed whirl- 
wind sweep you quite away !” 

Here a sudden coughing-fit came upon White- 
wright, and in an instant Moncrieffe had sprung 
from his chair. He caught his friend lovingly 
in both arms while the attack lasted. It was 
not severe or long, but to Moncrieffe’s over- 
bending face had rushed a look of startled 
distress. 

“I’m afraid excitement has brought this on,” 
he said, very tenderly. “Let us talk of other 
things now, Magnus. That will be far the 
wiser plan.” 

Whitewright pressed his handkerchief to his 
mouth for a moment, and then, a little tremu- 
lously, brushed it across his lips. 

“The wiser plan, Basil?” His eyes, burningly 
dark, seemed now to flash entreaty upon his 
friend’s anxious face. “ The wiser plan is to 
take this imp of fate by the throat and throttle 
it. Sit down, now, in my presence, and write 
Elma Blagdon a letter. I’ll dictate it; I’ll tell 
you every word to write. My body may be 
sick, but my mind isn’t. Come, now; do as I 
say ! ” He found one of Moncrieffe’s hands and 
clasped it with tight-clinging fingers. “ I’m 
right, Basil; I’m right. Some day you’ll thank 
me, if you don’t thank me now.” 

There came a silence. Moncrieffe let his hand 
stay firmly clutched like that. His color had 
quite faded before he again spoke. 

“No, Magnus. What you counsel would be 
dishonor.” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


191 


Whitewright softly pushed aside the haud 
which he had been holding. 

“Very well,” he sighed. “So be it. I am 
showing you the way out of the tangle, and you 
turn your eyes from my proffered clew! ” 

Moncrieffe sank on his knees beside the in- 
valid’s chair and re-gathered about his chest 
the shawl which had slipped from it. 

“Ah, you show me, my dear Magnus,” he 
cried, “a way that I have already thought of, 
but one that I dare not walk in, for fear of too 
torturing a self-contempt !” 


XIY. 

At the end of the first fortnight in Novem- 
ber Moncrieffe’s marriage to Elma Blagdon 
occurred. He had not seen Dunstan Thirlwall 
since his engagement, but with brazen effrontery 
that young gentleman appeared at his wedding. 
He wore a faint, petrified smile, and his man- 
ners were mantled with an inscrutable repose. 
His presence said to Moncrieffe: “I am here 
because I did not choose to stay away and have 
you think I was grinding my teeth and cursing 
you. And now you perceive that I am coolly 
walking about these drawing-rooms and do not 
show you, in your victory, the faintest trace of 
chagrin. ” But Moncrieffe, if he gave his former 
rival a thought at so preoccupying a time, must 
only have regretted that another who bore his 


192 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


name had not come in his place. Of course he 
did not mean Eloise, nor had he had any expec- 
tation of seeing her, or indeed any such desire 
save one clouded and acerbated by pain. But 
with Mrs. Thirl wall it was different, and he 
longed to find in her sweet, altruistic eyes an 
assurance, however dim, that the loss of Eloise’s 
love did not mean loss of her own friendship. 
For in many ways that friendship was as dear 
to him as White wright’s, and sanctified in her 
case as in his by the shadow of brooding if not 
imminent death. 

As for the other guests, all Riverview was 
asked, and all Riverview came. It made a gal- 
lant showing, too, with its fineries of equipage 
and attire. The wedding took place at about 
noon, in one of the drawing-rooms of The Ter- 
races, and the day was perfect. It was not 
really Indian summer, yet the air held hazy 
hints of that season. Beyond black traceries 
and columnar trunks of leafless trees the splen- 
did river swept its burning blue. Here and 
there it gave out a little wintry sparkle that 
the blandness of the long, fitful, sighing breezes 
belied. The atmosphere was full of milky azure 
softness that turned to actual pearl above the 
sharp levels of the Palisades. Row and then, 
below the terraced descent, become quite flow- 
erless, and tarnished if not really tawny, you 
heard the roars of speeding trains and caught 
sight of smoke that voyaged in whorls and 
spirals through the crystal yet mellowed me- 
dium of the air. In reality the landscape was 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


193 


waiting for winter; one could fancy that the 
bounteous and burnished river itself might be 
already touched with dreams of ice - locked 
scintillance. And yet nature, in her faded 
mildness and glimmering helplessness, ap- 
peared to yearn for respite from those hostile 
rigors, even while she resigned herself to their 
strenuous advent. 

A few people came from town to the wedding. 
They were mostly of a sort that mated ill with 
the other guests, and kept in little knots and 
cliques by themselves. Mr. Blagdon was im- 
mensely civil to them, and when the sumptuous 
breakfast was served, busied himself in seeing 
that no dainty escaped their chance of choice. 
Some of the Riverview folk had come with a 
keen intent of ridicule; but Elma had long ago 
foreseen that; there was never so self-poised and 
broad - glancing a bride. She had not more 
shrewdly supervised her own costume, with 
its opulent yet unexaggerated folds of satin, 
its superb yet tasteful array of jewels, its 
costly yet irreproachable veil, than she had 
pre-directed every detail of the festivity itself. 

A few sneers drifted covertly through the 
stately rooms, fragrant with garlands and clus- 
ters of every rare flower that lavish expenditure 
could assemble. These sneers were spoken in that 
stealthy undertone of malice which has neither 
the courage nor the will to be loud-mouthed, 
and they ran somewhat like this: 

% “I hear every diamond in that lovely necklace 
has been selected exactly according to the size 


194 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


of Mr. Blagdon’s famous Wide-Awake Liver 
Pill.” 

Or again : 

“Where do you suppose the groom got hold of 
such a patrician tailor? One might have ex- 
pected from a nobody like him an ill-cut evening 
coat and a set of carbuncle studs.” 

Or again : 

“They say we are to have ‘Her valine’ passed 
round in Sevres cups instead of bouillon .” 

Or still again : 

“I’m told Moncrieffe will soon buy out his 
apothecary friend over in the village, and build 
a huge emporium there for the sale of the Blag- 
don patent medicines. Of course, in that case, 
the authorities will demand a much larger price 
for that corner of the cemetery those railway 
people want to buy; it will soon have become 
so thickly populated (don’t you know?) with 
half our leading residents.” 

The “apothecary friend” had been a guest 
whom many had somewhat eagerly desired to 
meet. His personality, his marked educational 
rise above well-known family antecedents, his 
delicate health, his position as the bridegroom’s 
treasured associate, had roused for those who had 
not yet fallen in with him among his humble 
village surroundings a curiosity half careless 
yet wholly distinct. 

But Whitewright would not go to the wed- 
ding. He gave as a reason his uncertain health. 
Moncrieffe, who could not gainsay that, knew 
there was another. A breeze of dissension blew 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


195 


up between them. It was not quite lulled on 
the wedding-morning, but this fact did not 
prevent Whitewright from giving his friend 
the warmest of hand-clasps just before their 
final moment of parting. 

Gossip was quickly deprived of all comment 
concerning the wedded pair. Within three days 
after that brilliant and aggravatingly correct 
ceremonial at The Terraces Dr. and Mrs. Mon- 
crieffe had boarded a steamer bound for Europe. 
Blagdon did not accompany them, and people 
wondered how he would ever be. able to live 
apart from his beloved daughter. This ques- 
tion the old man soon answered by departing 
in search of her. He remained in the lordly 
and vacant house just about one month; then he 
sailed for Paris, a city which he had visited 
several times before (and once or twice with 
ravening medico-commercial intents), and for 
which he shared the almost invariable Ameri- 
can fondness. 

“ ’Twasn’tno use, El,” he said to Mrs. Mon- 
crieffe, as they sat together in one of the richest 
chambers of that very luxurious hotel, the Con- 
tinental. “ ’T wasn’t no use a bit; I had to 
come over and see if things were all right. 
Hot that I want to boss you or him; I just 
want to kind of set in a corner, if you’ll let me, 
and have you now and then cast your eye on me.” 

Elma gave a curt nod. She hadn’t liked her 
father’s sudden appearance here in Paris, and 
she had been at no pains to let him see that this 


196 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


was true. It had hurt him, but it had also com- 
forted him. He wished her to be incomparably 
happy with her husband, and it seemed like a 
potent proof of such happiness that she should 
aim to enjoy his company quite unshared. 

“Of course I’m delighted you came, papa, 
and all that. But Basil and I expect to travel 
a good deal about the Continent this winter. 
Shall you like to stay here in Paris, or shall 
you — er — join us at the larger places, like 
Berlin or Vienna?” 

“I’ll do anything you say, El,” replied her 
father. He had plainly detected the veiled note 
of vexation in her tone. Then he grinned wist- 
fully. “I guess you’re still so head-over-heels 
in love that you don’t want even your old pa 
anywheres ’round; ain’t that so! ” 

She spoke a little fretfully, ignoring these 
words altogether, and looking with a faint 
frown over one of his shoulders instead of 
into his face. 

“Of course I recollect that you like Paris. 
You’ve often told me that you prefer it to 
Hew York.” 

“Oh, a heap! ’Specially when I ain’t got 
any business to do. And you’ve made me quit 
all that over on the other side, so that when I’m 
in New York I half kill myself trying to kill 
time. And as for Riverview — well! . . .” He 
leaned back in his chair, and puckered his lips 
into a serio-comic distortion. “ That ’most 
drove me crazy, El, with you nowheres and 
yet every wheres. ” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


197 


“I see — yon got nervous.” She took out a 
tiny little jeweled watch from the front of her 
dress and opened it. She had asked Basil to go 
and buy her a rather expensive trinket which 
she had seen and liked that morning in a shop- 
window on the boulevard where they strolled 
together, and which neither of them had had 
money enough to pay for at the time. It seemed 
to her that he was staying a strangely long while 
on his errand. She looked at her father absently, 
and then gave her brows an abrupt, petulant 
crease. “Oh, papa, you’re crying! Do stop! 
What on earth is the use of making yourself 
so silly?” 

“I — I can’t help it, El,” he whimpered, dry- 
ing his tears with timid haste. “It is so good 
to see you again, and to know you’re just as 
happy as the day is long.” 

She rose, walked toward one of the silk- 
draped windows, and looked at the sky, where 
it brooded, a sullen drab, over the low, bare 
chestnut-trees in the Gardens of the Tuileries. 
“Basil and I are going to drive out this after- 
noon to the Jardin d’ Acclimatation. That is, if 
the weather permits. Afterward you can dine 
with us if you want, and then we’re going to the 
Odeon. You don’t understand a word of French, 
so you’d be bored there. But, anyway, as you 
must be tired by your journey from Havre, 
you’ll probably go to bed early.” 

This was Elma Moncrieffe’s mode of answer- 
ing those tears of welcome from the father who 
had come three thousand miles to get a glimpse 


198 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


of her adored face. He had given her a million 
on her wedding-day, but to-day he bored her. 
She would have denied that she did not care for 
him, however, and perhaps, after a fashion of 
her own, she would have been right. 

When Moncrieffe brought back the little dia- 
mond locket which had so pleased her in the 
morning, she scarcely gave it more than a 
glance. They were alone together, and she 
was dressed for their coming drive. 

“You were away so frightfully long,” she 
said. 

Her voice had a ring of complaint that was 
already quite familiar to him. 

“I knew you were with your father,” he said, 
“and so I both went and came at a rather 
leisurely pace.” 

“Oh, indeed /” Her voice breathed a sense 
of hurt that made him start and bite his lip. 
“That was certainly not very considerate.” 

“Considerate, Elma?” 

“You left me with papa while you strolled 
along the boulevard, amusing yourself.” 

He laughed rather good-naturedly, though 
with secret effort. “I couldn’t help believing 
that you would find amusement, and something 
more, in the company of your father, so soon 
after his arrival.” 

“Now you know that’s all stuff and non- 
sense!” she fired, with a receding twirl of her 
fashionable draperies. “You must realize that 
I think papa’s course in popping over here has 
been simply babyish .” 


A. MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


199 


“Oh,” he murmured, as if to one of the em- 
bossed chrysanthemums on the wall-papering, 
“you take that view, eh?” 

She nodded with an effect of bitter sapience. 
“ You seem to like his having pounced on us. 
You showed it by the way in which you went 
loitering along, this afternoon, and forgetting 
all about poor me. I know how full of attrac- 
tions the Paris streets are to a man who chooses 
to look for them ! ” 

The jealous innuendo in her last words made 
a sad smile flash across his face. But in an- 
other minute he went quickly up to her and 
caught each of her hands by its wrist. Their 
faces were scarcely an inch apart while he said: 

“Elma, don’t you remember your promise to 
me? Is this controlling that morbid jealousy 
of yours?” 

“I — I did promise, didn’t I? But Paris is so 
wicked!” 

“That has nothing to do with my being so.” 

“Lots of men wouldn’t even call it wicked, 
either.” She suddenly threw her arms round 
his neck and covered one of his cheeks with 
kisses. “Perhaps you don’t really think it is. 
Oh, I know I’m suspicious. But love without 
jealousy would be light without shadow — or at 
least it would with me .” 

“It ought not to be,” said Moncrieffe sternly, 
as he drew away from her and caught up a pair 
of gloves which he had thrown upon the table. 
He spoke with still harsher voice while he stood 
slipping his fingers into the flexile kid. “Such 


200 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


love as that is selfish, ud spiritual. It lacks due 
respect for its object, moreover — ” 

“Oh, there!” she cried, “if you’re going to 
lecture me I might just as well not go out 
driving with you.” 

“Be that as you please.” 

“I’ll — I’ll take papa,” she fumed. 

“Bo so by all means. In some respects he 
would enjoy himself much more than I. He 
would not get rapped over the knuckles every 
time he chanced to look at another woman be- 
sides yourself.” 

But Elma did not take her father. She was 
presently dri ven off at her husband’s side, and 
with a rather penitent demeanor. Their equi- 
page had that distinction of make and mode 
which a few hundred francs a month can pro- 
cure so admirably in Paris. As they bowled 
along the glorious amplitude of the Champs 
Elysees, they won much admiring heed. Mon- 
erieffe, with his pointed beard, looked like a 
Frenchman; Elma, with her thinnish features, 
hectic coloring and blonde tresses, might have 
passed for an Englishwoman if she had not been 
so irreproachably well-dressed. 

The day was cloudy, but mild for winter, and 
she had ordered the top of their carriage to be 
opened a la landau. When Moncrieffe saw 
this he frowned, but it was possibly too late to 
have the vehicle re-arranged. 

“Elma,” he soon said, “your scorn of the 
weather will bring you to grief before you’re 
much older.” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


201 


“Now, don’t begin to scold again , Basil.” 

“Oh, I’m only speaking as your physician,” 
he said dryly, “not as your husband.” 

“In our recent squabble, you know, dear, I 
surrendered so meekly ! An open carriage shows 
off one’s costume to such advantage. Besides, 
I’m proud of you; I want them to see my hand- 
some husband.” 

“Good Heavens!” he exclaimed. “One mo- 
ment you’re in agonies at the thought of my 
being looked at, and the next you’re desirous of 
putting me on exhibition!” 

But she was proof against another quarrel- 
some seizure. Her sudden amiability would, a 
little while ago, have surprised him. But now 
nothing that she did or said surprised him. The 
amiability lasted sturdily until they got back to 
the hotel. Then, as they were driving through 
the Place de la Concorde, with its immense 
space roofed by cloudy darkness which splendors 
of encircling lights made more somberly appar- 
ent, she gave an audible shiver and whined forth : 

“I’m glad I bought this wrap. But it isn’t 
enough. Besides, I’ve tired myself walking 
about among those animals. And then papa 
is going to dine with us, isn’t he?” 

“Naturally, I suppose, Elma.” 

“Please don’t assume that stolid style, Basil. 
I always do so hate it in you. It always makes 
me think you’re tired of my society.” 

In the gloom he gnawed his beard. “Do you 
mean that you don’t want your father’s company 
at dinner?” 


202 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“There you are again, Basil! As if I’d say 
so, even though I felt so ! Perhaps you think 
papa will be a relief.” 

He made no answer. A sickening chill crept 
about his heart. It was no longer a novel sen- 
sation with him ; he had almost grown used to 
it, of late. This perpetual presence of her jeal- 
ousy, and of something even worse than her 
jealousy — her vigilant search for some valid 
reason to be actually jealous — filled him with 
grief and dread. What might happen, he now 
asked himself, if this mania should find some 
faintly tangible excuse for its workings? He 
often thought, nowadays, of Pinckney Cassilis, 
off there at Riverview. She herself had laughed 
at his miserable subordination during the brief 
term of their engagement. “I did so love to 
terrify Caroline Cassilis,” she would say, “with 
the idea that I was going to steal from her the 
affection of her beloved spouse.” And what 
was she now doing, herself, but duplicating and 
l intensifying the same absurd matrimonial con- 
ditions? 

If he spent a half-hour out of her sight he 
never knew what wailful or belligerent reception 
might greet him on his return. At first she had 
been heedless about all pecuniary matters. Her 
nature, as he felt certain, was carelessly liberal 
in such ways ; he had never doubted this of her, 
and he did not doubt it now. But latterly she 
had grown exacting and particularizing ; for 
every hundred francs that went she would show 
a distinct concern. This had stabbed Moncrieffe 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


203 


with mortification. Their letter-of-eredit had 
been for a very large amount ; Elma’s personal 
income was now fully fifty thousand dollars a 
year. He had his own money, but both princi- 
pal and income were comparatively so meager as 
to seem almost ridiculous beside her own. Then, 
too, he had left a good share of what he possessed 
at home in River view. They had had two or 
three wrangles about this new monetary sur- 
veillance on her part, and at the end of each he 
had realized most clearly that she did not care 
an old glove for how much money was spent, but 
that she cared excessively for what he did with 
the money that passed through his hands. 

The absurdity of her posture woke his humor, 
but it also thrilled him with a glooming and 
dangerous ennui. He had never crossed the 
ocean till now. Paris was a visual and emo- 
tional delight to him. Ofteh he wished to visit 
certain parts of it (the Louvre, for instance, 
which he was never tired of exploring) when 
Elma’s fatigue or whimsical disinclination pre- 
vented their going together. That in such a case 
as this he should wish to go alone was inevita- 
ble. That she, for a frivolous and baseless reason^ 
should not wish him to go alone, blent in him J 
anger and disgust. He soon comprehended th^t 
her love was a kind of covetousness. It stung 
her to think that in buying him she might not 
have bought his loyalty, unswerving, incorrupti- 
ble. Yes, that was a brutal way of putting it, 
but then the fact itself now stood out before him 
as brutal as a pitchforkful of smoking offal. 


204 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


There had been times, of late, when he might 
excusably have treated her tyrannies with en- 
raged revolt. But he would not, as the phrase is, 
let himself go, and he did not mean ever here- 
after to let himself go. He believed most firmly 
that his neck had been bowed under this yoke 
quite without real option of his own. That the 
truth of this conviction is open to dispute, I shall 
not deny. But beyond doubt he held himself to 
be, thus far in life, what some critic, sentimental 
or otherwise, might have called a martyr of des- 
tiny. Alreadjr he had begun to fear that mutual 
miseries awaited himself and Elma. And yet 
he had already made more than one secret resolve 
that he would endure the worst with stoic nerve. 
In a vein of sardonic merriment he had even 
once said to his own thoughts: “What the dev- 
il’s to become of my theory that an outrageous 
fortune does put us through our paces willy- 
nilly, if I discover that I’m able, after all, to 
wrestle with his demonship and overcome it?” 

During dinner Elma was plainly bored. They 
had the meal served privately in their own rooms. 
Of the first two courses she scarcely ate at all. 

“Come, come, El,” said her father, “this 
won’t do. I’ll have to take you straight home 
to Riverview if you get off your feed like this.” 

“We had some chocolate at the Cascade,” 
she said listlessly, “ just before we drove home. 
Chocolate always takes away my appetite. . . 
Still, ’ ’ she broke off, in brisker voice, letting the 
faintest of side-glances glisten toward her hus- 
band, ‘ ‘ I begin to think dear old Riverview does 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


205 


agree with me best, and I’m very sure that I’m 
happier there.” 

‘‘Happier, El?” The old man instantly shot 
a demanding kind of look at Moncrieffe. It 
seemed to say, “What’s all this? Why isn’t she 
as happy now and here as she was there and 
then?” 

Moncrieffe said nothing, and Blagdon soon 
went on: “I should s’pose Paris, of all places, 
would raise your spirits. It used to. When you 
was a littlelish girl at the pengsiong you used to 
say to me, ‘Oh, pa, pa, ain’t it a splendid city to 
have a good time in?’ And I used to take you, 
whenever I could steal you away from the old 
maddom, to nearly every darned caffy on the 
Shamz Eleezy, and you’d translate to me the 
songs they sung in ’em.” And now there was 
a senile titter of laughter, and Moncrieffe heard 
the tap of his wife’s impatient foot on the floor 
under the table. Elma knew what was coming ; 
she scented a familiar paternal joke. 

“But I afterward found, ” continued Blagdon, 
exclusively addressing his son-in-law, “that 
the mischeevous youngster always left out the 
skittish parts of the songs when she told me 
what they meant, she was so ’fraid I’d get scared 
and not take her any more to the caffys.” 

During dessert Elma gave a sudden shudder, 
and looked drearily at her husband. “I believe 
I have taken cold, ” she said. “I think I’ll go 
to bed early this evening.” 

“And not go to the Odeon, then?” asked 
Moncrieffe, with rueful surprise. 


206 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“No,” came the answer. “We can go some 
other night.” 

“The seats are bought, you know,” said Mon- 
crieffe. “It was rather hard to get them, too, 
as this is the first night of a play that’s not been 
seen here for years.” 

Elma rose from the table. “Never mind the 
seats,” she said. “We can get others for an- 
other evening.” 

“Ain’t you feeling well?” asked her father, 
looking at her where she stood beside the light 
wood-fire that was making in its grate the ephem- 
eral yellow turmoil that almost all Parisian hotel 
fires are wont to do. 

“No, papa, not remarkably.” She had caught 
up a copy of the Figaro and was staring down 
at it, between outspread arms. “As you just 
heard me say, I think I’ll go to bed early.” 

Moncrieffe felt a sharp pang of disappointment, 
and he could not resist saying : ‘ 4 Then you’ll not 
mind, Elma, if I go alone, will you?” 

“‘Alone?” She swept a chill look toward him 
across the edge of the newspaper. “Oh, so you’ll 
desert me, will you?” 

“Desert you? Why call it that?” 

She flung the newspaper aside. “I do call it 
that.” 

“Your father is here,” he began — 

“Yes, I know. . . It’s rather odd, your anxi- 
ety to go alone.” 

“I don’t think it’s odd. I’ve a curiosity to 
see this play of Sandeau’s.” 

“Ah, you have!” she said, with a bright, 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


207 


skeptic smile. “And yet you don’t understand 
half of the rapid French they talk at the thea- 
ters; you’ve told me so repeatedly.” 

Moncrieffe colored. He had the pride so many 
Americans take in being thought to understand 
the spoken French which they can easily inter- 
pret on a printed page. But he turned the whole 
thing off in a kind of half-joke, at a moment’s 
notice. 

“Oh, I’ve made handsome provisions against 
my own ignorance. I got a copy of the play 
yesterday, and I’ve read it through with great 
care since then. I mean to take it with me and 
keep a sneaking eye on it under the rear of the 
opposite fellow’s chair.” 

“You mean to do this?” asked Elma, meas- 
uredly, after a slight silence. “So you’ll go, 
then, and leave me ill at home?” 

“Ill, Elma? You’re not really ill, of course. 
And — ” 

“As for that sneaking eye, Basil, ” she laughed 
icily, “it will probably be occupied in other ways 
besides the one you mention. At the Cascade 
this afternoon I saw it almost devour out of 
countenance that pretty woman in the violet 
velvet bonnet who sat on our right.” 

Moncrieffe got up from his chair with tight- 
compressed lips. “Elma, this is ridiculous.” 
His eyes sought Blagdon’s, and found they were 
already on his face. A natural self* exculpating 
shame made him continue : ‘ ‘ Elma must be right. 
She probably isn’t well.” 

The old man’s features had hardened a little; 


208 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


but they relaxed, now. “Oh, well, then, do as 
she wants, Basil. Stay home, and nurse her and 
pet her. ’ ’ 

“I don’t wish to be nursed,” leaped from 
Elma, “and I abhor being petted.” 

Twenty bitter things that he might have re- 
torted here rushed to Moncrieffe’s lips. But in- 
stead of speaking one of them he walked quietly 
over to the chair in which his wife had sank. 

“I will not go,” he said. “And if you are 
ill enough to need my care I’ll give it you most 
gladly.” 


XV. 

Such saint-like concession, it may be urged, 
could never have come from a man who was not 
still under the personal spell of attraction for- 
merly exerted by the woman to whom he now 
gave it. 

No criticism of Moncrieffe’s course could in- 
deed be truer than this. Whatever the ascendency 
that Elma had gained over him — sexual, physi- 
cal, spiritual, or indefinably a commingling of 
all three — there is no doubt that she still retained 
it and that long afterward, in a fitful yet asser- 
tive way, she had never entirely lost it. Except 
for this same magic and mystery of allurement, 
rebellion might much sooner have broken bounds. 
But to yield like this was to use one’s own be- 
nignancy as the measure of future tolerance; 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


209 


and Moncrieffe soon confessed to himself that 
he now had very little to spare. What cruelly 
added irritation to displeasure was the matter- 
of-course mien with which Biagdon treated his 
capitulating behavior. 

“I was glad to see you give right in,” he told 
Moncrieffe, a good hour later, when Elma had 
gone to bed. “It’s the only way to get on with 
El; you got to let her have her head; she’ll 
make you pay for it if you don’t. ’Most always, 
too, she’s nice as pie afterward. I guess you’ll 
find the wind in the right quarter to-morrow. 
It’ll shift round sou’ westerly during the night.” 

“Elma’s fits of ill-humor are hard to bear, Mr. 
Biagdon.” (Here Moncrieffe instantly noticed 
a look of haughty surprise on the face of his 
father-in-law.) “But her preposterous jealousy 
whenever I glance at another woman is growing 
an actual persecution.” 

Biagdon stared at him in a style that he might 
have used toward an impudent waiter. He al- 
most growled out his first words. “It’s early in 
the day for you to get out o’ patience, young 
man. You knew pretty well what you had to 
expect when El let you marry her.” 

“I did not know that I had to expect she would 
make me ridiculous, Mr. Biagdon.” 

“Ridic’lous? Oh, stuff! Lots o’ young fellers 
like you would be flattered to the nines. It 
shows she’s awful fond of you — wants you all to 
herself. Of course it won’t last, and then p’aps 
you’ll begin to be sorry it hasn’t.” 

“It will last,” said Moncrieffe, with sad posi- 


210 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


tiveness. “It’s a part of Elma’s willful spirit.” 
(The old man’s face here clouded sternly; he 
might say hard things about his child himself, 
but hearing some one else say them was quite 
another affair.) “I foresee that sooner or later 
trouble is to spring from it, and trouble of the 
very gravest kind. I’ve often heard her make 
fun of Pinckney Cassilis, there at Riverview. 
I’ll not wear the cap-and-bells as he is doing ; 
but before she learns that I will not I’m afraid 
she will have made much misery for both of us.” 

Blagdon scowled, now, in most angry earnest. 
“And what’s the difference between Cassilis and 
yourself, if you put it like that, Mr. Independ- 
ent?” 

The blood rushed to Moncrieffe’s brain. He 
clenched both hands, and drew in a deep breath. 
“I’ll tell you what is the difference, sir. It’s 
this: Mr. Cassilis endures being made absurd 
in the eyes of his wife, and I will not do so.” 

“Oho! you will not, eh.” The old man’s face, 
in its sallow ruggedness, looked full of smolder- 
ing wrath. “You’d better kick up rows. I’d 
like to see what you’ll gain by it.” 

“I should lose much more by letting myself be 
imposed upon than I’d ever gain by standing 
injustice.” 

The money- getter and money-lover came out 
strong, now, in Blagdon’ s air. His observer 
felt this before speech made it still clearer, and 
the divination harrowed him like the scratch of 
a talon. 

44 That depends on what you call loss and what 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


211 


you call gain. You’ve got a clamed sight more 
now than I guess you ever came near having be- 
fore, in the whole course o’ your life. ” 

“I’.ve ‘got,’ sir, as you choose to put it, noth- 
ing that I’d rate as worth having at the cost of 
my self-respect.” 

“Oho,” said Blagdon again. He was not 
sneering ; he was grumbling out a kind of bluff 
“call-to-order” that almost stirred nausea in his 
listener. “Your self-respect don’t prevent you 
from living on the money of the wife you mar- 
ried, and — ” 

“Stop there, if you please.” 

Moncrieffe had shot over to the side of his 
father-in-law. His eyes were very bright and 
his face was very pale. ‘ 4 Let me tell you this, ’ ’ 
he said, quite low of voice. “It was you, sir, 
who first desired and almost asked me to marry 
Elma. I did not engage myself to her, however, 
until she had herself made it more than patent 
that she desired me to do so. . . Not a word 
yet, please,” he swept on, as the old man, with 
somewhat altering face, showed signs of re- 
sponse. “Now I propose, in few words, to tell 
you just what my self-respect will do, provided 
it receives either from you or your daughter any 
further hints that it doesn’t exist. It will leave 
both you and her, with all the money you pos- 
sess between you, to represent all the impudence 
and assumption you may both choose to air. 
Before you selected a son-in-law you should have 
been careful to observe how much browbeating 
he would probably be willing to receive. In 


212 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


that respect, sir, I must tell you that I have 
come, rather speedily, to the end of my tether. 
If I am ‘living on the money of the wife I mar- 
ried,’ it is in my power to convince you that I’ll 
only live on it with the understanding that you 
and she both solicited from me such a course of 
life. We’ve spoken of Pinckney Cassilis; you’ll 
find no such cringing character in me. If there’s 
only one New York law that will dissolve mar- 
riage, there are others in other States where di- 
vorce can be secured for desertion. These laws, 
if you and she push me to it, I will unhesitat- 
ingly put you in the position to exploit. ’ ’ 

A sudden clutch beset the lapel of Moncrieffe’s 
coat. The large, square-jawed face into which 
he firmly gazed was ashen, now. 

“Oh, Basil! Divorce! A — a — divorce be- 
tween — No, no, no! It would kill El! It — it 
would kill her if you even talked of it! . . . 
Come, now, come ! Let’s try and fix this thing. 
I — I guess I was pretty plain-spoken, just now. 
But I’m — I’m sorry. There ! Take my hand, 
and set down, and let’s chin together sensible.” 

Moncrieffe’s victory, this time, was complete. 
He had subdued the plutocratic arrogance of the 
old man, but as he afterward keenly discrimi- 
nated, he had won his innings purely because 
of that passionate paternity which was now the 
ruling energy of Blagdon’s existence. And the 
latter, notwithstanding his complete surrender 
that night in Paris, retained an afterthought of 
grudge and aversion. He could never really 
forgive any one who could not forgive his idol- 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


213 


ized Elma, all the way from petty slight to a 
sense of monstrous wrong. 

The next morning Moncrieffe found that his 
wife was indeed ill, though not severely so. She 
had caught cold, and as he watched her with 
the eye of a physician he discovered symptoms 
of a certain physical weakness till then wholly 
unforeseen. 

He asked her a few questions, to which she re- 
plied as lucidly as memory would permit ; she was 
in very gracious mood, notwithstanding her bod- 
ily languor, and several times she besought him 
to forgive her for all her perversity of the night 
before. He told her each time that he had almost 
forgotten the incident, which was in a measure 
true, so strongly had this new discovery taken 
hold of him. At about noon she insisted upon 
rising from bed and having her maid sum- 
moned to dress her ; but hardly had she placed 
her feet upon the floor than she fainted com- 
pletely away. The maid ran in great alarm to 
Moncrieffe, who chanced to be close at hand, 
only a threshold or so aloof. The attack that 
followed was a spasm of just the sort which he 
might have expected. It was not acute; it im- 
plied no immediate danger ; but it was symp- 
tomatic, corroborative. Elma woke tranquil 
and clear-headed from her convulsions, which 
had been totally unconscious. She said with a 
tired smile to her husband that she thought, 
after all, she wouldn’t rise for an hour or two 
yet. But she had no inclination, as it turned 
out, to rise at all that day. Her father, brim- 


214 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


ming with solicitude, came and sat beside her 
as long as she would sanction his presence. 
When dismissed he meekly retired, and kept 
repeatedly muttering to Moncrieffe that if he 
thought anything serious was going to happen 
he must have no hesitation about getting to- 
gether two or three of the best and most famous 
doctors in Paris. Moncrieffe kept replying that 
if he had any fear of that kind he would un- 
doubtedly consult other medical advice. He 
refrained from betraying a word of the truth to 
his father-in-law. ‘ 4 She may live for years, ’ ’ he 
thought, “and any statements I made might 
prove the idlest of monitions.” At the same 
time, he felt it the wiser plan to seek out, that 
same afternoon, a certain American doctor who 
dwelt not far away, during a somewhat pro- 
longed sleep into which Elma had fallen. He 
explained his diagnosis to this gentleman, whom 
he found both courteous and intelligent. He 
also found that he had not erred in his estimate 
of the malady with which his wife was afflicted. 

“She may live for years,” he again said to 
himself, as he returned to the hotel. ‘ ‘ But the le- 
sion exists — possibly it exists for none other than 
congenital causes, and explains many eccentric- 
ities whose origin was unguessed before. She 
has been a sick girl when she dreamed herself 
the healthiest. That infernal ‘Bright’s’ has had 
her in its clutch, very possibly, since she was 
seventeen.” 

It pleased him, professionally, to think that 
he might wrestle with this distemper from a rel- 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


215 


atively new standpoint, just as he had waged 
quiet combat with the illness of Mrs. Thirlwall. 
The physician with whom he had talked had 
strengthened, though not at all egotistically, his 
belief in his own powers and equipments. Their 
conversation had served to remind him how hard 
he had studied and thought before presuming to 
practice in Riverview. “I can keep her alive 
for years yet,” he mused, while retracing his 
steps to the Rue de Rivoli, “provided the deadly 
thing doesn’t take one of those leaps that no man 
of real science may presume to prophesy.” 

She was awake when he got back to her bed- 
side, but not in the least reproachfully so, and 
she expressed herself as feeling strong enough to 
get up and dine with himself and her father. 
He had no difficulty in vetoing this impulse. 
She submitted to his counsels, and even fell 
asleep while he was imparting them. He would 
have preferred another effect than this drowsi- 
ness, but he had no hesitation in telling her father 
that it might bring for her a morrow of good 
results. 

He would have gone to some theater that even- 
ing but for the presence of Blagdon, since Elma, 
watched by her sedulous maid, dozed on so qui- 
etly. But to dine with the old man was an 
obligation, and he met it in serene concession. 
Blagdon, for some reason, got to be garrulous 
on the subject of Riverview. Some things that 
he babbled hardly diverted the heed of his son- 
in-law from the excellent claret and the flavor- 
ous olives. 


216 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“I guess that railroad scheme, Basil, ain’t go- 
ing to get on for a year or two yet.” 

“Not for a year or two?” he answered, un- 
aware of what he really said. 

“No, sir. The directors have quarreled with 
the townspeople for about the tenth time, and 
the bill at Albany still hangs fire. It’s that dev- 
ilish graveyard business, you know.” 

“Graveyard business, eh?” 

“Yes. There’s some new trouble, now. It’s 
the Smiths and the Curtises. They’re kicking. 
They’ve both got vaults they don’t want plowed 
up. They ain’t any great shakes in Riverview, 
if it comes to that, but they’ve done a good deal 
of living and dying there for over a hundred 
years. They ain’t swells, but they’ve got money, 
don’t you understand, and they own an acre or 
two here and an acre or two there, just as the 
Thirl walls do.” 

“The Thirlwalls?” 

“Oh, they're willing enough to sell. They 
ain’t kicking. They’re hard up, you know, and 
I guess they’d be the first to settle if they only 
got a chance. . . And so you really think El 
may turn up bright and fresh to-morrow morn- 
ing?” . . . 

A week later Mr. and Mrs. Moncrieffe left 
Paris for Italy. Rome, when they got there, 
was sunnily cold, as it is so apt to be in the 
winter months. They spent a fortnight under 
the dome of St. Peter’s before Blagdon joined 
them. Then they went with him to Naples, and 
there Blagdon expressed a desire to cross the 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


217 


Mediterranean and get a glimpse of Algiers. 
Elma, now radiantly well, insisted that he 
should carry out this idea. She arranged, with 
quiet assertiveness, that he should spend a cer- 
tain time in Africa and rejoin herself and hus- 
band in Vienna during the early weeks of spring. 
He obeyed her mandate, and after parting with 
him in the south of Europe they found him turn- 
ing up, with pathetic punctuality, in Austria. 
Thence they repaired to Paris, when the chest- 
nut-trees were whitely blossoming on the loveli- 
est thoroughfare in the world. 

A kind of peace had meanwhile clad Mon- 
crieffe’s days. Elma had often distressed him 
by her caprices, but never so harshly or obsti- 
nately that a few words of warning, of repri- 
mand, did not work prompt effect. 

But in Paris, revisited with indecision * as to 
the homeward journey, a sharp change occurred. 
Moncrieffe got from their bankers a small bud- 
get of personal letters. These were brought him, 
as it chanced, in Elma’s presence. While read- 
ing one from Whitewright he broke out into an 
exclamation of sorrow. 

“Ill again, dear boy! But not like the last 
attack, thank God!” 

Elma, who had been scanning a yellow-cov- 
ered French novel, threw her book aside. “ReadN 
me the letter,” she said. “Read it from first to 
last.” 

Moncrieffe resented her tone. It was touched 
with too authoritative an accent— one pregnant 
with reminders. 


218 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“I’ll read you,” he said, “what dear old Mag- 
nus tells me about — ” 

“Read it aZZ,” she commanded. “Begin at 
the beginning, and read every word.” 

“No,” he said. “There are passages — ” And 
then he paused. 

“Passages about Eloise Thirl wall, no doubt!” 

This was the first time in many weeks that he 
had heard her mention the name. “Ah, be care- 
ful!” he broke out, hardly knowing what he 
said or what he meant. 

“Careful?” she echoed. “Of what? Is her 
name so sacred, then? Do I soil it by pronounc- 
ing it?” And she laughed a shrill, trenchant 
laugh. 

All the rest of that day she was alternately 
cynical and morose. In the evening it had been 
arranged that they should go to the Frangais, 
where Mounet- Sully was to play in “Ruy Bias.” 
Shortly after dinner she joined Moncrieffe where 
he stood before the dressing-glass in his own 
apartment. 

“I don’t care to go this evening,” she said. 

He laid down the brush with which he had 
been stroking the side-locks of his hair; and 
these had grown more than faintly frosted, by 
the way, since his marriage, young as he still 
was. 

“You are well?” he asked. 

“It isn’t that.” 

“What is it, then?” he persisted. “What is 
it this time f Pure, unadulterated caprice?” 

She lifted her small head high on its slim and 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


219 


graceful throat. “You may call it what you 
please. ’ ’ 

“Thanks; I will.” 

A curtness in his tones almost frightened her ; 
she had had from him nothing like it till now. 
It was time to go to the theater ; his overcoat 
lay on a chair, and he took it up. As he did so 
she said to him : 

“You are going alone, then?” 

“Yes,” he replied. “Why not, since you will 
not accompany me?” 

“I don’t wish you to go alone.” 

He began to put on his overcoat. He felt, as 
her husband, very obdurate; but as her physi- 
cian he was touched by thrills of indulgence, ex- 
tenuation, even sympathy. Still, she had told 
him that she was not ill, and he now knew so 
intimately every shade of change in her face 
that he could not doubt the truth of this avowal. 

“ You did not wish me to ‘go alone,’ ” he 
said, “once before, on a like occasion, in this 
very same hotel. I yielded to your desire then 
because you declared yourself, and quite truly, 
out of health. But this evening it is different. 
I shall not treat your whim seriously. ’ ’ 

“You’ll go then, without me?” she returned, 
under breath, with sparkling eyes. 

“ With you, Elma, if you choose.” 

“But I don’t choose.” 

“Then I shall go alone.” 

“You’ll — you’ll disobey me, you mean! 
You’ll — ” 

“Disobey ?” he repeated, and went close to 


220 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


her while he buttoned his overcoat with quick, 
nervous fingers. His face was set, and the color 
had wholly faded from it. “How dare you use 
such a word to me, Elma? How dare you even 
imply that I owe you the least obedience ?” 

“How— dare I?” 

She gasped out the sentence, and then laughed 
mockingly. “Do you suppose I’ve forgotten you 
were the merest nobody when I married you? 
Do you suppose I’ve shut my eyes to the fact 
that my having stooped to marry you was a 
condescension for which you should always be 
grateful?” 

Moncrieffe stood immovable for a few seconds. 
Then he reached out one hand and slowly took 
his hat from the near table. After that he low- 
ered his head a little, and walked to the door, 
while Elma, seemingly rageful and palpitating, 
watched him. 


XVI. 

With a hand on the knob of the door, Mcn- 
crieffe paused. Then he spoke, and every word 
seemed to pierce the air like a pistol-shot, though 
his voice was not once unwontedly raised. 

“I will never notice you again until you hum- 
bly beg my pardon for what you have said. And 
still more, I will never notice you again unless 
you add to your apology the admission that you 
uttered two falsehoods a moment ago. The first 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


221 


in stating that I was the merest nobody when 
you married me ; • the second in stating that your 
having married me was a condescension for 
which I should always be grateful. I shall at 
once take quarters in another hotel, and will 
send for my luggage to-morrow. You shall have 
my new address, and can make such use of it as 
you may please. A steamer sails for America 
next Saturday, and if before then you have not 
conformed with my demands (I assure you 
they’re quite unalterable) I shall be one of her 
passengers.” 

He immediately left the room, and soon after- 
ward the hotel. He did not see Mounet- Sully 
that evening; he spent some time, instead, 
strolling along the boulevards, and later engaged 
a room at a charming little hotel called the Bal- 
moral, in the Rue de Castiglione, almost oppo- 
site that in which his wife and his father-in-law 
still abode. 

He felt very firm, though at the same time 
immeasurably grieved. Row and then, how- 
ever, the physician in him became at odds with 
the man, and he recalled what he knew of that- 
subtle, ineradicable disease lurking in Elma’s 
body. He recalled, too, how his own skill had 
combated and kept it at bay, quite without her 
knowledge. Was she, after all, really responsi- 
ble for the insolence and absurdity of her con- 
duct? 

Then the man, the outraged husband, insisted 
on his response. Admitting that her health was 
organically unsound and that her brain had been 


222 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


subjected to its deteriorating spell, self-control 
was nevertheless a power within her reach. He 
had offered her the chance of atoning for that 
vulgar and cruel assault. If she refused this 
chance he would keep the very letter of his 
threat. And now he found himself hoping pas- 
sionately that she would refuse the chance. For 
a long while he might not be free to marry Eloise, 
but he would achieve a liberty which had rather 
speedily grown to him more dear than all con- 
ceivable luxuries. 

He had been at the Hotel Balmoral nearly a 
day when Blagdon appeared there. The old 
man looked humbled in spite of himself, and his 
civil bearing had a most factitious hint. “He 
would like to shake his cane over my head if he 
dared,” thought Moncrieffe. “He’s frightened 
half out of his wits, however, on her account. 
Above all things I don’t wish to seem as if I 
were bullying him, for Heaven knows I have not 
the faintest wish either to do so or to seem so.” 

Blagdon began with a solemn little cough. “I 
got here as soon as I could after El told me about 
it, and that, I guess, wasn’t more than a half- 
hour ago. You’d sent her your message this 
morning, and she’d had the baggage you wanted 
shipped here across the street to you, and I didn’t 
know what was up, and couldn’t get a word out 
of her for hours. All she’d do was to say ...” 

“Well?” Moncrieffe asked, as the speaker 
tilted his big round-topped walking-stick be- 
tween two concave hands, after having grown 
abruptly silent. “All that she would do, I sup- 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


22a 


pose, Mr. Blagdon, was to say hard things about 
me and my cause of absence. ’ ’ 

“Well — I guess you ain’t very wrong there.” 

* ‘ What the hard things were I prefer not to 
learn. I prefer not to learn anything, if you 
please, except whether she will or will not yield 
to my commands.” 

“Commands, eh?” 

“Commands — positive and unrelaxing. I’ve 
the right to call them so. If it were possible that 
I could speak to her as she spoke to me I would 
hold her requirements of apology in the light of 
commands. But it is not possible. However, 
let that pass. You came here, Mr. Blagdon, 
with your daughter’s knowledge and sanction?” 

“No — no. I came to — to try and get this 
thing straightened out, if I could.” 

“Straightened out?” . . Moncrieffe smiled a 
little wearily as he repeated the words. “Only 
one person can perform such an office. She 
knows how. If by Saturday she has not done 
so I shall sail on the Champagne .” 

An oath, and a raw, hot one at that, leaped 
from Blagdon. His eyes were aflame with wrath 
as they met the tranquil look of his son-in-law. 
He bobbed up from his chair, with the walking- 
stick gripped crosswise against his stomach. 

“You’ll sail, eh? You’ll sail?” he snarled. 
But these two quick questions were touched with 
an abrupt plaintiveness. “And— and what will 
you do when you’ve got to the other side?” 

“Go and live again with my friend, Magnus 
Whitewright. ” 


224 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“Stay in Riverview?” he muttered, as if he 
were saying it to his own thoughts. “Leave 
your wife, but stay on in Riverview?” 

“Not permanently, I think, Mr. Blagdon. But 
in no case would I ever return to The Terraces 
until — However,” he broke off, with an iron 
inflexibility of manner, “what I did do or did not 
do would be quite my own affair. You have 
evidently come here — I read it in your face when 
you first presented yourself — with some sort of 
persuasive idea. No such idea could be made to 
prevail with me, however skillfully you conveyed 
it ; and let me add, please, that your recent burst 
of bad language did not indicate either skill or 
taste.” 

Blagdon got up from his chair now, as if once 
and for all. His gray-fringed lips were trem- 
bling, and the red of his tongue slid out for a 
second, as if moisteningly, between them. “I 
— I guess that settles it, ’ ’ he stammered, huskily. 
“She won’t give in. She told me pretty much 
what she said. P’aps it was worse than she told 
me.” He snatched a handkerchief from his 
breast-pocket and crushed its folds against his 
forehead. 

“Good God!” he suddenly blurted out, with 
what to his hearer meant a world of strange and 
savage pathos, “why can’t you love her enough 
to let her play all the pranks she pleases? Why 
can’t you love her as I do? I wouldn’t care 
how she acted to me ! I wouldn’t really mind 
if she kicked me in the face — if she — ” 

He gulped down the next words and stood 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


225 


glaring miserably at Moncrieffe, with the hand- 
kerchief making a white trail from one hand 
and the walking-stick obliquely dangling from 
the other. 4 4 And damn it all, ’ ’ he recommenced, 
“she cares more for your little finger than for 
my whole body, though I am her own father 
and give her a clean million as a weddin’- 
present!” 

This appeal (if from one point of view almost 
ludicrously uncouth) could not fail to touch Mon- 
crieffe. It did not alter his resolve, however, 
and he was about to say so with a candor as 
gentle as he could make it, when a sharp knock 
broke on the new stillness. 

Moncrieffe went to the hall- door, but a step 
from where he stood. He opened it, and saw 
one of the hotel waiters. In another instant he 
saw his wife. She brushed past the waiter and 
swept quietly into the room. 

4 4 You’re here, papa? I thought so. You 
must go. Please go at once. At once, I say, 
papa.” 

Her tones were singularly colorless, and not in 
the least high. She at once had her way with 
her father. It seemed to Moncrieffe as if only 
two or three seconds had sped on before he per- 
ceived her turn the key of the door and veer 
about, facing him, in a chamber where now they 
two stood quite alone. 

Her locking of the door gave him an impulse 
to go and possess himself of the key which she 
had left there. It was hard to tell what act of 
desperate folly she might commit. But as he 


226 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


moved a pace or two forward she flung herself 
at his feet. 

“Forgive me this once, Basil! I’ll say every- 
thing you told me I must say ! I’ve been wrong 
■ — I’ve been horribly wrong and bad and mean! 
I never thought you a nobody; you were more 
like a god to me, Heaven knows ! And I never 
thought I stooped in marrying you ; it was you 
that lifted me to your level!” 

She caught one of his hands in both her own, 
and showered kisses upon it — warm kisses, that 
were soon blended with warmer tears. Her face 
was touched by a peculiar yellowish pallor whose 
origin he could not now fail to know, and her 
imploring eyes looked up at him from little cav- 
erns of dusk. 

“So, you have come to your senses, Elma?” 
he said, and raised her to his side, slipping his 
hands about her slender waist. “I’m glad of it, 
my dear — most glad!” . . . 

She told him, a little while after the restora- 
tion of peace between them, that she had come 
to her senses in another way than the one to 
which he referred ; and when he asked her what 
way it was, she replied that it concerned the im- 
mediate making of her will. She had never 
made it ; she had never thought about it since 
the occasion on which her father had given her 
that grand dot. Then she had rather snubbed 
him for presuming to deal in any such grisly 
allusions at so gay a time. How, however, she 
insisted that a certain American lawyer, resident 
in Paris, should be asked to draw up such a doc- 


A MARTYR OP DESTINY. 


227 


ument as quickly as possible. To this plan her 
father assented, and perhaps with the feeling 
that it would matter very little whether he as- 
sented or not. On finding that she had left to 
her husband every dollar of her million, he gave 
a great inward groan. Never again would Mon- 
crieffe be a son-in-law after his own heart; he 
had forgiven the young man for handling his 
wife’s father without gloves ; but to manipulate 
in like manner the impertinence, even the impo- 
sition of that wife herself, was less easy of par- 
don. It was always humming through his brain 
that Moncrieffe ought to bear any sort of injury 
from Elma ; and when he came to formulate this 
conviction and found it a phantom reflex of his 
own intense paternal prepossession and prejudice, 
the case was not mended in the least, and Mon- 
crieffe seemed ungrateful, unhusbandlike, un- 
chivalrous, just the same. 

Still, he made no demurrer at his daughter’s 
sweeping bequest. In the first place, to do so 
would have raised a tempest, and in the second 
place he felt quite equal to the idea of Moncrieffe 
as a widower millionaire if Elma should die be- 
fore he did, provided this new reconciliation 
should bring lasting peace in its wake. And so 
the will was executed, and the legatee, conscious 
of his wife’s expressed intent, knew nothing of 
its practical fulfillment. Blagdon did not doubt 
that Elma had told her husband she had made 
him her absolute heir. The old man longed for 
one grandchild at least, and confidently expected 
more than one. He did not look forward to his 


228 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


own death for several years hence, he could not 
invest his volatile and energetic daughter with 
the possibility of dying till many years after 
himself. He had made his will, leaving every 
other million of his big fortune unreservedly to 
Elma. But of course there would be time to 
alter it if no children were born. And yet here, 
perhaps, coming years might set for him a snare. 
The potential childlessness of Elma must keep 
him on his guard. He shrank from the contin- 
gency which might put Moncrieffe into a future 
ownership of his entire fortune. 

There had been talk, before that telling quar- 
rel, of a long-continued stay in Europe. But 
Elma, though not at all dominatingly, had be- 
gun to speak of a homeward voyage. She was 
now in good apparent health; yet one watchful 
eye detected clearly the risk which might come 
to her from any other kind of life save that of 
thorough domestic repose. Touches of sweet 
and tender compliance marked every hour of 
her daily life. Never was repentance more seem- 
ingly sincere. She would take long walks and 
drives with her father, and treat him in such 
filial fashion that her smiles went to his doting 
old head like draughts of champagne. As for 
Moncrieffe, “I am falling in love with her all 
over again,” he would tell himself; and then the 
afterthought would press upon him: “Have I 
ever really loved her, and is not this only a re- 
exertion (though perhaps quite unconscious on 
her part) of that same semi - physical, semi- 
psychical sorcery which mastered me months 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


229 


ago?” She was meanwhile vivacious, witty, 
amusing, and amiable past all dream of cavil. 

The truth was, two evil forces were now lulled 
in Elma’s composition. One took its rise, long 
ago, from a training of reckless laxity. One was 
the product of that cloaked and sinister disease 
which an almost random flash of discovery had 
betrayed to Moncrieffe. Dread of losing her hus- 
band had combined with severe moral penitence 
for having assailed him in such atrocious terms. 
This mental betterment kept pace with a happier 
healthful state, and may indeed have helped to 
engender it. A century or two ago they would 
have said that her devil had been cast out, and 
given romantic reasons for his exorcism. Now- 
adays we have grown to think and speak of such 
personal domiciliary imps with a more prosaic, 
scientific and elucidating spirit. 

Moncrieffe was not averse to sailing homeward 
during early J une, and when Ehna had declared 
her preference for such a plan the departure soon 
took place. For a day or two the voyage prom- 
ised fine weather ; then came a cyclone, fiercely 
violent, which kept the ship shuddering and 
tumbling for nearly five successive days. Mon- 
crieffe was one of those sailors whom no amount 
of bad weather could disturb. Blagdon quickly 
succumbed. Elma, who was always a poor 
sailor, became very ill ; then, on the second day 
of the storm, unconsciousness followed, and for 
several hours afterward she was at the point of 
death. The exhaustion of extreme seasickness 


230 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


had wakened that slumbering viper of disease, 
giving it a chance now to make her body its 
easier prey. 

No one on board the big, tossing steamer knew 
of this except Moncrieffe and the regular marine 
physician. There came for Elma’s husband a 
certain fateful moment. It was just at nightfall ; 
a day of weary rolling and reeling promised a 
still wearier night. He looked at Elma ; her faint 
breathing gave little fluttered motions to her 
pinched and hueless nostrils, oddly like that pal- 
pitance we see in the gills of a gasping fish. He 
touched her forehead ; it was icy. He took her 
temperature, forcing the small medical thermom- 
eter between her bluish lips. 

“She is dying,” he presently told himself. 
“Or, at least, her life hangs by a thread.” And 
at this instant a pang of wild, unreasoning glad- 
ness darted through his breast. To do him plain 
justice, not the vaguest remembrance of money 
entered his thought, nor would any such remem- 
brance have entered it if he had known of the 
making of that recent will in Paris. It was 
merely one swift and headlong sensation with 
him, as chainless, as impetuous, as those winds 
outside that were plowing great liquid valleys 
in the ocean beneath him and keeping the floor 
of the little stateroom at a continual distressful 
slant. She ivas dying , and he had been glad. 
No subsequent qualm of conscience could deaden 
the self-reproach of that reviewed emotion, quick- 
ly though his touch had sought the electric but- 
ton at his side, and eager though he had found 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


231 


himself to summon the physician of the ship. . . 
In another hour all danger had passed. 

The weather quieted into a summer calm be- 
fore port was reached. Elma did not leave her 
cabin until the last day out. Then she appeared 
on deck, weak and wofully pale. She kept speak- 
ing of how horrible her seasickness had been, 
and declaring that she would never cross again 
as long as she lived. Her father, who had won- 
dered at her prolonged lassitude after the fright- 
ful storm had ceased, told her jokingly that she 
would forget all her miseries and be willing to 
sail again within a fortnight. 

“You get it both from me and your mother, 
El. I’m bad in rough water, but your mother 
— she used to be knocked clean over if it blew on 
a ferry-boat going to Staten Island.” 

They went straight to Riverview, and found 
that The Terraces was in admirable form for 
their reception. The telegrams to the servants 
had acted like a clarion order to a well- drilled 
troop. Elma had been a martinet with the whole 
band of them in former days; they obeyed her 
in a good deal of fear, from housekeeper to 
stable-boy; but, after all was said, they liked 
her and had a very firm faith in her mercies, 
only wishing, at times, that these could be more 
securely calculable. 

But neither they nor any mortal who came 
into contact with her could ever calculate upon 
Elma. As regarded her health, Moncrieffe had 
believed that he could safely do so. He had de- 
cided that she would probably be feeble and for- 


232 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


lorn through the early part of the summer, and 
dreaded that heat of June which so often plagues 
the Hudson with almost torrid rigors. No sooner 
had his wife set foot within the fair and hospit- 
able chambers of The Terraces, however, than 
she showed a phenomenal return of strength. 
She laughed at the idea of resting, when both 
her husband and her father proposed rest, on the 
day of her home-coming. She insisted on roam- 
ing about through the spacious mansion. She 
wanted to revise everything, to inquire about 
everything. “I never felt stronger,” she kept 
saying. ‘ ‘ Give me my head ; don’t oppose me. ’ ’ 
There was not a gleam of the old imperiousness 
in such words as these. And before long she 
laid her hand on Moncrieffe’s arm, saying with 
a sudden sweetness which was part of the fasci- 
nation she had always preserved for him : 

“I know you’re wild to see your dear friend, 
White wright. Now, don’t bother about me. 
Go to him at once. And I only hope you’ll find 
it far better with him than what I know your 
fears are prophesying. ’ ’ 

“If she had always been like this,” thought 
Moncrieffe, “I would never have forgotten how 
I love Eloise Thirl wall, but I would still never 
have missed a certain consolation for the savage 
accident that precipitated our marriage.” 

“Ain’t she feeling splendid?” Blagdon mur- 
mured to him, a little later. “If she’d only go 
on like this I’d like to give a big ball to celebrate 
getting back again. It couldn’t be very big, 
though, could it? There ain’t enough high- 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


233 


toned folks here for that. But I could just cram 
the house with flowers, and have ten more hired 
men than we’ve got, to stand round the halls 
and stairs, and a supper with wines that aver- 
aged six dollars a quart bottle — all the swell 
champagne brands, and Shatto Marga and Clow- 
divoorga and Rummanycontee, and all that. I’d 
make the papers send reporters down here, and 
they’d each give it a column afterward, you can 
bet. . . But there ain’t any counting on El. She 
might be just as spry as she is now till the time 
came, and then fizzle right out. . . I mean in her 
health, o’ course,” he broke off, as if with some 
subtle apologetic deference. And then he added 
pensively, and in lowered voice: “Or she might 
take a tantrum, too. . . Anyhow, I guess it’s 
best to let things keep quiet as they are. . . 
Don’t you?” 

“Decidedly yes,” Moncrieffe answered. As 
he glanced at the old man’s heavy face he saw 
that his eyes were humid with half- repressed 
tears. And he knew they were tears of joy, of 
exultation, since this idolizing parent believed 
fondly in the full-restored health and happiness 
of his child. . . What anguish would spring 
from the knowledge that death constantly over- 
shadowed her, and at any moment might reach 
toward her the dark arm of his irresistible 
embrace 


234 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


XVII. 

For over an hour Whitewright had sat with 
his friend on the small and narrow piazza of the 
cottage which had lately been their common 
home. An exquisite June afternoon was deepen- 
ing into twilight. The lilacs in the doorway had 
faded, but every breeze bore waftures of scent 
from the great syringa bushes, thick-sprinkled 
with starlike blossoms. Beyond the little ordi- 
nary gate curved the white road, plunging into 
a woodland whose greenery twinkled with vernal 
freshness, and leaving behind it a tender idyllic 
sense of departure, mystery, and quest. 

“And so you’ve told me all, Basil?” said 
Whitewright, breaking a silence which may 
have lasted longer than either of them knew. 

“Yes — all. I’ve kept nothing back, Magnus. 
Why should I — from you f” 

Whitewright gave a short nod. “Well, it’s 
come, then. Your harvest is being reaped al- 
ready, my boy. Tares instead of wheat. It’s 
too bad for a man like you. It’s too damnably, 
devilishly bad!” 

Moncrieffe answered with a look of surprise. 
“So you put it like that, Magnus? I thought 
you’d agree with me that I’d achieved a mag- 
nificent victory.” 

“If it lasted— yes. But how long will it last? 
Volcanic conditions are quiescent; the crater 
doesn’t even smoke. When will the lava boil 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


235 


forth from it again? In a year, a month, or a 
day?” 

“You’re consoling, certainly. And so you 
believe — ’ ’ 

“That the leopard will not change his spots? 
Of course I believe so. But what you tell me of 
her frail health holds forth to you a promise of 
future freedom.” 

“In God’s name don’t talk like that,” said 
Moncrieffe, getting up from his chair and taking 
out his watch. “May she bury me and live fifty 
years afterward!” 

<? Live, you mean, to marry some other fellow 
and lead him a still livelier dance. ’ ’ 

“Oh, yes, if you please — anything. As it is, 
Magnus” (he went up to his friend’s chair and 
dropped one hand on his shoulder with gentle 
emphasis), “I’m very fairly contented, and have 
no grand ambitions about ever being more than 
this. My only hope is to remain no less unsat- 
isfied with my present fate.” 

A queer sparkle, half humor and half satire, 
came into Whitewright’s dusk eyes. His frame 
had grown a trifle thinner, but his pale, mobile 
face, with its tell-tale hollowness about either 
cheek, had not appreciably changed. 

“How you damn your own happiness with 
faint praise, Basil!” 

“Come, come; don’t begin to scold me.” 

“You wish you were back here in this cozy 
and humble little shanty — I’d bet big that you 
do!” 

“I haven’t said it, and if I wished it I wouldn’t 


236 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


say it. . . How the time has rushed on since we 
began to talk ! And what pleasure it’s been to 
see you and hear your voice again! You’ve 
made up your mind, after all, that threatened 
men live long. Don’t say you haven’t. I’ve 
not heard a single burst from you of that old 
morbid good- humor, that cynical cheerfulness, 
that tombstone-shaped geniality.” 

They laughed together, for a moment, looking 
into one another’s eyes. “You told me not to 
scold you, Basil, and I won’t. But I’m tempted 
to — I’m tempted to!” 

“Of course you are. For you won’t believe 
that I couldn’t help doing what I did, and that 
my case is only one of millions, and that the 
world is full of folk who can’t help doing what 
they do.” 

“The world,” Whitewright both smiled and 
frowned, “is full of persons with impassioned 
opinions. Life is the great objective mystery at 
which we’re all gazing with our various-lensed 
telescopes. You tell yourself that your telescope 
is the true one ; it reveals to you the victimiza- 
tion of the individual, and makes him a mere 
puppet, moved by invisible wires — ” 

“Not quite that, Magnus. I never said any- 
thing so arbitrary. But I did and do say — ” 

“Allow me, please, the privilege of making 
my own mistakes. It’s one, dear Basil, that 
you declare your beloved ‘destiny’ is only too 
generous about conceding.” 

“Sarcasm, eh? Well, philosopher?” 

“7 tell myself that I see the mystery as it 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


237 


should be seen — as a fortuitous combination of 
griefs and joys which we waste energy in both- 
ering ourselves about any more than we can and 
must, since thousands and thousands of years 
will pass over this poor insignificant little planet, 
and heed no more the fact of our having once 
wept or smiled here than we now heed the fact 
of a lightning-bolt having killed some saurian 
invertebrate ages before the birth of history.’ ’ 

“Well?” 

“Your wife tells herself that she sees the mys- 
tery — ” 

“She doesn’t tell herself (pardon me) anything 
of the sort. She has no settled faith in her own 
views. She’s like a wisp of sea-weed, plastic 
and sensitive to every random current.” 

“As you please. Her telescope, then, has a 
broken ]ens, which turns the mystery into a still 
more mysterious turmoil. . . With Mrs. Thirl- 
wall it is wholly different. She finds in life 
nothing but an agony of disappointment, because 
she has searched in vain for signs of another life, 
immortal and beatific. . . With Eloise Thirlwall 
there’s an opposite effect altogether. She finds 
in the mystery a beautiful and comforting solu- 
tion, expressible by the paradox that it cannot be 
solved at all except when the awakening and 
not the slumber of death shall brighten darkness 
and disentangle complexity. And so the whole 
multiformity confronts us. Who is right, who 
wrong? Who sees the straightest and deepest, 
who the crookedest and shallowest? Ah, that’s 
only another mystery, is it not?” 


238 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


He glanced up at Moncrieffe, and found that 
his face was preoccupied, his air inattentive and 
absent. ‘‘Flattering, on my life, Basil! You’re 
not listening to a word of all my wisdom. 
You’ve made me cast myself like a swine before 
pearls — to put it (ahem!) politely.” 

Moncrieffe replied in confused tones, like one 
startled out of a reverie. “You — you spoke of 
Tier, Magnus. I had wanted to ask you about 
her, and about her aunt as well. A certain re- 
luctance kept me silent — a diffidence, a dread. 
She — is — well?” 

“Yes. Quite well, I think.” 

“And Mrs. Thirlwall?” 

“Not half so well as when you gave her your 
care. But that isn’t all. Her son, Dunstan, is 
a perpetual trial to her. They say that since he 
lost all hopes of marrying the lady who is now 
Mrs. Basil Moncrieffe he has been harassing his 
poor mother with a project she shrinks from and 
resents. It is nothing more or less than the sale 
of Greendingle and the exchange of River view 
for New York. Of course, in one sense, River- 
view is New York. But Dunstan wants a rented 
house on Fifth or Madison Avenue, or some- 
where like that. His demands are agonizing to 
his mother.” 

“I see, I see,” said Moncrieffe. He had turned 
pale. “And you learned this, Magnus, from — ?” 

“Mrs. Thirlwall herself. I may as well tell 
you that she’s been an angel to me since you 
were away. I didn’t care to mention her first ; 
I wasn’t sure of how much or how little you 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


239 


might care — ” He paused, and smiled up into 
his friend’s face, and the smile had for its re- 
cipient subtle blendings of affection and regret. 

“Yes, I understand. And you have seen a 
good deal of her during these past~months?” 

“Not so much. But she’s looked me up. 
She’s persisted in not forgetting me. She’s been 
an angel to me, as I said. ’ ’ 

“She’s an angel to everybody — even to that 
unspeakable son, if he’d only realize it. You’ve 
gone at all to Greendingle?” 

“No. She’s dropped into the drug-store, dear 
soul, and made believe that she came there only 
to buy liniments and lotions. But when I was 
ill she came here, and her niece came once or 
twice, too. But her visits happened every day 
for a whole week.” 

“God bless her!” 

“It was because of you that she came as much 
as because of me — more, perhaps, on your ac- 
count, Basil.” 

“No, no. Don’t say that.” 

“She’s devotedly fond of you still.” (That 
“still” stabbed Moncrieffe) “I think she 
wanted me at Greendingle, but he has been 
there, off and on, nearly all the time, and I im- 
agine she felt that he might be insolent, or at 
least smolderingly arrogant, to a poor village 
apothecary like myself.” 

“No— it wasn’t that, Magnus. She knew that 
he knew I was your friend.” 

“Possibly. But she didn’t ask me, and I was 
glad not to be placed in the posture of refusing, 


240 


A MARTYR OP DESTINY. 


for I should have refused. My strength isn’t 
equal to any unusual draughts on it nowadays 
It’s all sunset with me, and not a particularly 
brilliant one, either. My sun is declining in 
gray-and- silver, not purple-and-gold. However, 
I didn’t intend to spout picturesque moribund 
egotisms. . . She got to speaking with great 
frankness. ‘They say’ with me really meant 
‘she says,’ though of course customers that drift 
in to purchase porous-plasters and liver-pills 
often hold the privilege of gossiping profusely 
as a part of their gracious condescension in not 
going to the druggist two corners away. . . In 
her pain, and perhaps in her pity and liking for 
me, the poor, dear lady has been lavishly confi- 
dential, ‘There’s no two ways about it’ (as the 
primitive resident of Riverview remarks to me 
when he comes in for a half-ounce of peppermint 
and wants to talk fifty pounds of politics) Dun- 
stan Thirlwall has been conducting himself like 
the cruelest of household ogres. He’d set his 
mind on your marrying Eloise— you know for 
what reason. And now that his fortune-hunt is 
thwarted, he proposes to live in town, where his 
slender purse can give him fresh and ampler 
fields of matrimonial exploit. But his mother 
knows very well that the sale of Greendingle 
would necessitate large expenditures with the 
money gained from it. The new railway-com- 
pany are still dubious about buying it. Event- 
ually they will buy it, and if the estate is sold 
now the next owner will probably reap huge 
profit. For the railway is bound to be run 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


241 


through that very property, sooner or later. 
Hundreds of real-estate speculators would buy it 
now, just on this chance. But it isn’t in the 
fashionable building district, you know ; it would 
bring only a low price at present, under the 
hammer. Dunstan is tired of waiting for the 
railway people to act. With what he scoffingly 
calls the ‘graveyard sentimentalists’ it will, in- 
deed, after all, be only a question of a large 
enough offer. Riverview will forget that the 
bones of its forefathers are buried in that desired 
segment of the cemetery. Mrs. Thirlwall, for 
her own part, thinks paramountly of poor Eloise. 
She doesn’t want the property sold now, because 
from her widow’s-income, which is also the full 
family income and is by no means a generous 
one, she hasn’t yet saved enough dollars to 
place Eloise above want in case of her own 
death. ’ ’ 

Moncrieffe, who had lowered his head, here 
lifted it. His voice was neither tremulous nor 
hoarse, but had the effect of quiet struggle to 
stay both firm and clear. 

“And you mean, then, that Mrs. Thirlwall 
thinks a sale of Greendingle and a residence in 
some rented Hew York house might war upon 
those habits of saving which will be deliverance 
for Eloise at some later day?” 

“Yes. As it stands, and as you doubtless 
know, her income is now absolutely her own. 
Dunstan has nothing except what she gives him, 
and at any minute she has the full legal right 
to withdraw the allowance at whose meagerness 


242 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


he grumbles. But this fact only augments his 
irritation and impatience. It does more.” 

Whitewright’s voice fell, and he leaned back 
in his chair with a deep, slow sigh. 

“What more, Magnus?” 

“It adds fuel to his hate of Eloise. He is keen 
enough to see the real motive of his mother’s 
humane obstinacy.” 

4 ‘ Poor girl ! What a forlorn lot ! ” 

“Neither she nor her aunt will call it so, as 
long as they can both live on together and find 
strength in their union. For Dunstan’s bark, 
after all, is worse than his bite; indeed, he 
hasn’t any real bite as yet; it’s all a perpetual 
bark, harmless though discordant. But if any- 
thing should happen to Mrs. Thirlwall ! . . . 
Ah, then he might become an incarnate perse- 
cution to Eloise ! Then indeed she might trem- 
ble at the forlornness of her lot!” 

No doubt the lovely evening landscape was a 
charmless blank to Moncrieffe, as he drove home 
by emerald pastures full of browsing cows, and 
huge wayside copses of flowering elder, and 
thickets of wild-rose, where the blossoms thronged 
creamy and pink. 

“If I could help her, if I could help her,” he 
kept thinking. “If I could help them both !” 

He was very far from being the poor village 
doctor now. He sat in an easy-rolling carriage, 
on the softest of cushions. It was an open car- 
riage, and he could look up from the back seat 
on which he lounged, and see the speckless and 
modish liveries of the two men on the box. It 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


243 


was all mightily different from the little one- 
horsed “light- wagon” in which he had driven, 
not long ago, over these very roads. And this 
truth must he believed of him, that he felt no 
pride, no self-gratulation, as so many other men 
of his age and worldly place must have felt. In- 
sisting to himself, as he changeiessly did, that 
his marriage had not been one of cold ambition, 
but that fate had pushed him into it, he had 
none of that shame which will pierce some self- 
serving spirits even when they have committed 
a bloodless and sordid act. 

And yet, while certain carriages passed him, 
and he raised his hat to their inmates, he imag- 
ined the amused or scornful comments which 
his presence, here in this luxurious vehicle, 
would evoke. Once it was a relief to meet the 
Cassilis carriage. It stopped, and Mrs. Cassilis, 
superb in one of her best toilets, with the bought- 
and-paid-for Pinckney at her side, asked beam- 
ingly after Elma, and said she was so glad to 
see him back again, looking so very well. Pinck- 
ney Cassilis echoed her welcomes-, and their 
modish equipage moved on. “At least they can’t 
talk contemptuously of me behind my back, ’ ’ 
thought Moncrieffe. 

But soon his mind reverted to Eloise and her 
aunt; and before he reached the great gray 
walls of The Terraces, looming between their 
full-foliaged chestnuts and hickories, he had said 
to himself again and again that he must and 
would go to Greendingle. He would go in the 
role of Mrs. Thirlwall’s quondam doctor — why 


244 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


not? She needed him; her health needed him. 
Had not Whitewright plainly declared so? 

And then the chilling reminder came: How 
would Elma endure this idea? He recalled her 
silly outcry, so brief a while ago, in Paris. But 
Mrs. Thirl wall, her friend, her admiration? 
Would not the fact that she required his services 
prevent any return of that detestable contumacy? 
Besides, was not Elma’s evil genius now perma- 
nently exiled? Had he not firmly and finally 
given it “notice to quit”? Had he not made it 
unflinchingly clear to her that the methods of 
Pinckney Cassilis were not his own? And then 
the demands of Eloise’s aunt upon his mercy 
were also, beyond dispute, demands upon his 
dignity, courage and self-respect. 

“These qualities have not failed me yet,” he 
mused, “ in my dealings with the woman I have 
married.” Just then the carriage swept through 
the gateway of his father-in-law’s beautiful and 
stately domain. “Nor shall they fail me here- 
after,” he added, with a silent bitterness ill- 
suited enough to the whispering cadences of the 
leafage and the silvery sheen of the great, proud 
river, viewed by enchanting glimpses beyond 
bounteous boughs and velvet lapses of sun- 
dappled lawn. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


245 v 


XVIII. 

His knowledge that Mrs. Thirl wall needed 
him in a professional sense would have glad- 
dened the anxious heart of her niece if she had 
been made, that very evening, aware of it. For 
more than a month Eloise had noticed in her 
aunt signs of fitful yet decisive failure. Mrs. 
Thirl wall tried to conceal the truth, but vainly; 
the gaze that watched her was no less keen than 
loving. 

Dunstan had been blamable for this change; 
so his cousin would often bitterly reflect. All 
through the winter he had been tormenting his 
mother to sell Greendingle. He had found a 
purchaser willing to give a fair cash sum for 
the estate, though of course any new month or 
week might make this offer seem absurdly 
small. The railway company, by altering 
apathy into action, might raise tenfold the 
present value of the family acres. Mrs. Thiri- 
wall kept refusing, just as her son had kept 
insisting. 

“You will not consent,” he at length had 
grumbled, “because you are saving up two or 
three thousand a year for that girl.” 

“Dunstan,” replied his mother, “you should 
not blame me if this were true. But I do not 
say that it is true.” And she smothered a 
weary sigh. 


246 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“You’ve made a will,” he sneered, “and I 
happen to know it. Lawyer Brookham told me 
as much, the other day.” 

“Ah, you’ve been making inquiries, then?” 

“Why shouldn’t I make inquiries?” he fumed. 
“Did my father leave you this life-interest that 
you might hoard money from it for the gratifi- 
cation of your outside personal charities?” 

Mrs. Thirl wall’s voice shook a little as she 
next spoke. “Dunstan, my son, can you call 
provision for poor Eloise by so unfeeling a 
name?” 

“Provision for poor Eloise!” he scoffed. 
“How about provision for me, the lawful heir 
to this property, and the son of the man who 
left you in charge of it?” 

“Dunstan, let me say to you what I have al- 
ready said more than once: If you did not treat 
Eloise with the hatred and avoidance that you 
show to her, I might not feel concerned in her 
future welfare when I am dead and gone. As 
it is, you have your allowance — five thousand 
dollars a year, and this home, freed from all 
expenses of living.” 

“Five thousand a year! A fine sum for a 
man in my position.” 

“It is more than I retain for the full house- 
hold expenses. I am giving you more than 
half my actual income — more than half what 
I spend on Anita, myself, and the manage- 
ment of the property, as it now unhappily 
stands, taxes and all included.” 

A dull flash left Dunstan’s eyes. “Anita, 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 247 

indeed ! Why lug in that chattering little atom 
of semi-idiocy?’ ’ 

“Dunstan! she’s your sister.” 

“But Eloise isn’t my cousin, though you 
give her all the rights and claims of your own 
daughter.” 

Mrs. Thirl wall shook her graceful head, with 
a smile of irony and fatigue. “Ah, my boy, 
she takes to-day less out of the family income 
than would make the wages of a maid-servant.” 

“We ought to live in town,” struck off Dun- 
stan. “With the price I could get for this place 
we might live there. I’m sick of moping here 
like this. I might bring about the whole sale 
in a fortnight. It would mean four hundred 
and fifty thousand cash, which could be hand- 
somely invested at five per cent and even more. 
We could rent a house in some nice street, 
and — ” 

“Stop, Dunstan. I know perfectly what you 
mean. My immediate income (for you must 
pardon me if I tell you that it still would re- 
main mine, you know) would markedly increase. 
But that surplus — or the greater part of it — 
would be spent in idle pleasures by your- 
self.” 

“Idle pleasures? Am I a dissipated person, 
then?” 

“Yes.” 

“You’re insulting, mother.” 

“No, I am not. You are dissipated, Dun- 
stan, and you know it. You may not be grossly 
so, but you are luxuriously and very selfishly 


248 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


so. At my death you will have all; but until I 
die — ” 

“Until you die,” he shot out, with a harsh- 
ness all the more brutal because bathed in surly 
semitone, “you will go on saving for that girl, 
who hasn’t the ghost of a claim upon this prop- 
erty, and whose mother — ” 

“Dunstan! Dunstan!” . . Here Mrs. Thirl- 
wall rose, quivering and horrified. “I entreat, 
I c. mmand you to be silent!” 

And then he had flung himself out of the 
room, with scowls and mutters, and in a week 
or ten days, or perhaps even sooner, the same 
scene, more or less painful, had been repeated. 

That winter Dunstan hated Riverview more 
than ever, for the reason that his position there 
as the defeated straggler for Elma Blagdon’s 
hand in marriage was now full to him of covert 
slurs and stings. In his social New York expe- 
riences the course was far more comforting. 
Here he moved among cliques that viewed 
with taken-for-granted languor all aims among 
un wedded members to marry at the most mun- 
dane of dictates. Meanwhile, he found himself 
less liked than formerly. Disappointment and 
defeat had blent his native cynicism with a 
more acid tincture. People of his own bent 
sought him less for their dinners and small re- 
unions. He knew that he had lost the old art of 
amusing them by his insolence and indifference, 
leaden yet polished. Rage and mortification are 
imperiling to a fine repose, and, beyond question, 
he had bled from the darts of both. With 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


249 


women, it has been said, strong emotions harm 
the complexion; with men, they disorder the 
manners. Dnnstan had always prided himself 
on the perfection of his manners when occa- 
sion called him to exploit them. He kept them 
laid away, as it were, and yet ready for in- 
stant use. They certainly were effective in 
texture and fit. They were wrought, so to 
speak, like delicate chain-armor, of metallic 
little links and involutions; and, it must be 
owned, that they sometimes revealed an ex- 
traordinary suppleness. But now their tough 
yet pliant fabric was marred by dints and 
even rents as well. He had fallen into that 
fatal error for a man of fashion — he betrayed 
his resentments and spites. The truth was, a 
fierce and tenacious hatred had fastened upon 
him. He had urged his mother to sell the 
family property and leave Riverview, chiefly 
because the rural restrain ments of the place 
afflicted him with an unbounded boredom; but 
he was sensible, while he thus urged her, that 
the return of Dr. and Mrs. Moncrieffe to The 
Terraces would invest departure with added 
charm. It was in him to cherish grudges, 
and there were times when he knotted both 
hands in ugly waking dreams of personal 
conflict with this upstart usurping young 
doctor. His native good-sense kept telling 
him, all the while, that his only real assail- 
ant had been the infatuation of Elma herself. 
But Moncrieffe stood tangibly and loathsomely 
for his memorable repulse. In a way the haunt- 


250 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


ing fact of this repulse deadened and paralyzed 
his matrimonial energies. He had been wounded 
in a very sensitive place — that of self-love and 
conceit. He had intended, for some time past, 
to make an enviably rich marriage; he belonged 
to a class of our youthful American “gentry” 
who regard honorable citizenship in that some- 
what misty light and from that somewhat un- 
steady standpoint. But now he felt a chili 
through every fiber, a shock through every nerve. 
His town associates explained it all with secret 
giggles, of which he only divined the irritat- 
ing echoes. A rich patent-medicine man’s 
daughter in Riverview had thrown him over 
for another fellow, and the whole business had 
got him into a devil of a rage. That was what 
he kept hearing them say, and the uncertainty 
as to whether they really said it or no made 
him watch for an ambushed sneer in smiles 
that he had not previously dreamed of analyzing. 
Some of these smiles were on lips feminine, and 
that made matters all the more provokingly 
worse. 

He had his rooms in town, and through the 
recent winter would spend three or four days 
there without a glimpse of Greendingle. In 
proportion as his hate for Moncrieffe rankled, 
his old-time antipathy to Eloise increased. Her 
pathetic birth had never had for him the slight- 
est pathos. It was simply an occurrence that 
should have been long ago smothered up and 
forgotten. His mother’s noble exposition of it 
struck him as needlessly and acutely vulgar. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


251 


Eloise was a family skeleton, and her proper 
place should have been a closet supplied with 
the discreetest of padlocks. She made people 
talk, and rake up an old scandal; she was a 
kind of living and breathing scandal herself. 
If she could have been got away by a quiet 
marriage with some such decent and obscure 
person as Moncrieffe, she would in a measure 
have ceased to reflect annoyingly upon the 
Thirlwall repute. She would have been a 
femme couverte , in that case; the skeleton 
would have been laid at last in that closet 
whence no heroic imprudence should have per- 
mitted it to emerge. 

Nearly every time that he had gone to River- 
view since Eima Blagdon’s marriage he had 
marked his appearance there by a disputatious 
talk with his mother. Eloise had grown to 
dread his comings far worse than the rawest 
east wind that ever swept through the Hudson 
valley. But she had always held her peace, and 
refrained from an interference which she well 
knew would be drearily futile, and which might 
be dramatically so. Not that she cared if Dun- 
stan should pelt her with insult, provided h9 
ceased to fret and irk her aunt. But this con- 
tinuous chafe and strain were telling so upon 
Mrs. Thirlwall that the girl feared to be out of 
her presence, lest some sudden affrighting news 
should re-summon her there. 

Dunstan was at Riverview, it chanced, on the 
day that the Monerieffes returned. He had 
driven that afternoon to the village, and some 


252 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


one there had told him the news. Meanwhile, 
Eloise had learned it from Mrs. Bellchambers, 
who had dropped in at Greendingle just before 
obtaining it from Heaven knew whom. This 
lady did not see Mrs. Thirlwall, for she was 
lying down at the time of the visit. Not that 
she was ill, Eloise explained, but that she found 
herself rather oddly and unaccountably tired. 
And Mrs. Bellchambers went home, and held a 
talk that evening with her husband. 

“The poor dear thing has heart-disease, you 
know, Frederick. I’m so fond of her, and no 
doctor ever did her the faintest good but Dr. 
Moncrieffe.” 

It was nearly dinner-time, and Mr. Bell- 
chambers felt in a cheerful mood. To-day he 
was going to permit himself one boiled potato, 
as a most exceptional luxury, and he sniffed the 
air, at intervals, as though he smelt it boiling. 
“And now that Moncrieffe is back again,” he 
said, “why shouldn’t she ask him to go on pre- 
scribing for her? In a friendly way, of course. 
He’s a good fellow, as I’ve always insisted, and 
his change of fortune would never harden him 
into any state of paltry pride.” 

Mrs. Bellchambers primly compressed her 
lips. “I don’t know what a ‘good fellow’ 
means. We won\>an have never been able to 
master the depth and subtlety of that term; 
we have to take its definition on trust when- 
ever the superior wisdom of you men confronts 
us with it. But I think I do know what a 
heartless trifler means.” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“Ob, you will have it that he's one.” 

“Basil Moncrieffe had his choice to marry for 
love or for lucre, and made his choice. Well, 
I don’t blame him on that score. You men are 
always — ” 

“We men are always bad lots, my dear, when 
we’ve the option between vice and virtue. I’rr 
familiar with your view of us.” 

“Frederick! ” 

“Oh, yes, ycu really compel me to wail a 
little under the goad of your contempt for my 
sex. But how about Elma Blagdon having dis- 
tinctly ‘fetched’ Moncrieffe, as the current phrase 
runs?” 

“‘Fetched’ him? Her money did that.” 
And here Mrs. Bellchambers became as one 
panoplied with the most impregnable convic- 
tion. “Don’t tell me, please, that he could 
ever have preferred Elma to Eloise Thirlwall. 
You might as well saj^ that I’d prefer a prickly 
weed to a Jacqueminot rose. And you ask me 
why Basil Moncrieffe shouldn’t go on prescrib- 
ing for his former patient in a friendly way. 
Have you forgotten that Dunstan is there at 
Greendingle, no doubt burning with the most 
dismal resentment and disgust? A fine sur- 
rounding for Dr. Moncrieffe, if he should ven- 
ture in it — even though the voice of distress 
called him!” 

Such a voice seemed to call him now, in the 
ears of Eloise. During dinner little Anita 
nestled at her side, repressed into big-eyed si- 
lence by the presence of her brother. Mrs. Thirl- 


254 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


wall, weak and artificially buoyant, talked of 
everything, of nothing. At length, just before 
dessert, she rose a little unsteadily, and said in 
a wavering voice, 

“Come with mamma, Nita. She’ll lie down 
for a while on the lounge in the sitting-room 
and tell you a story. But if she’s too tired to 
end it you must let Cousin Eloise do that, some 
time between then and your hour for bed.” 

Alone with Dunstan, a little later, Eloise felt 
the air of the dining-room weigh on every move- 
ment she made, thicken every breath she drew. 
Dunstan rarely spoke to her, rarely gave her 
even a sign that he was conscious of her pres- 
ence. She knew that her aunt would not have 
gone away like this if stringent inertia (follow- 
ing a repast of w r hich she had eaten with tell- 
tale languor) had not almost pushed her from 
the table. 

“She does not like to leave me with Dunstan 
any more than I like to be left alone with him,” 
thought Eloise. “And y v et, after all, it’s fortu- 
nate. It gives me my chance.” 

The servant had retired. The two cousins 
sat opposite one another. Eloise glanced across 
the table while she stirred her small cup of coffee 
with its small post- prandial spoon. 

Dunstan was coolly peeling an orange. His 
eyes were fixed on his plate. 

“Aunt is not well. She’s not at all well,” 
Eloise said. 

He looked up, but did not meet her eyes. She 
saw in his, however, the old apathetic disdain. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


255 


“I haven’t noticed that her health is worse 
than usual.” 

“It is decidedly worse.” Nerving herself, 
Eloise went straight to the point. “And old 
Dr. Bascomb, who has got well enough to at- 
tend her now and then, does her no good. 
Neither does his new associate, Dr. Parkley. 
There is no one who has ever done her any 
good except Dr. Moncrieffe. He returned to- 
day from Europe, and I want her to see him.” 

Dnnstan looked her full in the eyes. Then, 
after a kind of flurried, swimming glance to 
left and right, packed with constrained ire, he 
dropped the half-peeled orange upon his plate, 
and rose. 

“Have you so little dignity as to try and use 
this miserable makeshift for seeing again the 
man who jilted you?” 

“Jilted me, Dunstan?” 

“Threw you over — tossed you aside like an 
old glove,” he persisted, white to his lips, which 
were scornfully curled. 

Eloise smiled pityingly. Her eyes closed for 
a second, and a visible shiver crept through her 
frame. Then her wrath rose, and she with it, 
and while passing from her seat at the table and 
clutching the back of her chair, she haughtily 
retorted : 

“It is false that Dr. Moncrieffe ever did what 
you say. It is false that he ever spoke to me a 
single word to justify your shameful sneer. If 
you are thinking of what Elma Blagdon, his 
wife, did to you — ” 


256 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


4 4 Be careful!” 

He swept round to her and faced her. But 
she did not recoil a step from his stormy brows 
and clenched hands. She felt very desperate, 
yet was unaware if she were brave or meek; 
she simply acted out the human challenge his 
brutality had roused in her. 

“You hate Dr. Moncrieffe because he married 
the woman you wanted to marry. You tried to 
prevent him from becoming Elma’s husband by 
a course of action toward me that was grossly 
cruel and unjust. I shall not ‘be careful,’ as 
you call it, any longer. If you were to strike 
me it would be an act of cowardice that would 
fittingly end all the unmanly treatment I’ve for 
years been forced to bear from you.” 

“If I were to strike you, eh?” he scoffed. “I 
don’t strike women, no matter how they may 
choose to offend me by their cheap insolence. If 
you’d a shred of real self-respect you wouldn’t 
propose that this fellow should enter these 
doors.” 

“Even though I lest self-respect by asking 
him to come,” Eloise cried, with cheeks and 
eyes enkindled, “I would gladly pay that and a 
still heavier price to bring poor Aunt Emily the 
least needed help.” 

Dunstan thrust both hands into the side-pock- 
ets of his evening short* coat, and sauntered past 
her with high-held head. 

“Oh, of course,” he muttered, “you naturally 
should feel grateful to the lady who permits you 
to call her your aunt.” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


257 


He at once quitted the room after having de- 
livered himself of this highly noble response. 
Eloise stood with bowed head for a brief while, 
plainly trembling. This was not the first time 
she had received from the same hand a craven 
little dagger-thrust. In other days they had 
been dealt her with just the same mean, abrupt 
malice. She wiped from her eyes the flooding 
tears. Then slowly, and with a lovely, uncon- 
scious defiance, she lifted her head. 

‘‘I should be used,” she thought, “to that old 
jibe of his about my birth. There’s novelty, 
though, in his attack on my self-respect. . . 
Well, I’ve got from him just the heartless 
rebuff I might have expected. But at least 
he knows that I think Basil Moncrieffe ought 
to see Aunt Emily. I’ve broken the ice, in 
that way, just as I’d resolved to do. Now 
I’ll find means to tell Moncrieffe that she’s ill 
and needs him. I’ll either write or I’ll go 
boldly to The Terraces. It will be hard to 
do either, but one or the other I will do. . . He 
never threw me over; he never tossed me aside 
like an old glove. He didn’t care for me as I 
cared for him: Elma fascinated him, and — he 
married her. He married her half because she 
put it in his power to ask her pointblank, and 
half because he loved her well enough to have 
asked her, if she’d been poor and a nobody like 
me, without any incentive but his own dominat- 
ing passion. It was all authentic and sincere 
with him! I’m certain of that! I should be 
certain of it till his own lips told me otherwise! 


258 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


I could never believe he sold himself. Aunt 
Emily doesn’t believe it, but if she did I 
wouldn’t. For I know in my inmost soul that 
though he might yield to a sentiment his higher 
nature thought shabbily of, he would never 
stoop to an act that would taint the sacredness 
of the marriage-tie with smirches of mere 
money-getting greed.” 

These reflections left her stronger. She was 
a girl in whom fortitude, faith, constancy, were 
always acting with an elixir-like energy of rep- 
aration. No amount of disaster would ever 
quite have quelled her, and real despair was 
impossible to her temperament. Or, if despair 
came, it at once began to rebuild a kind of con- 
tentment out of its own ruin. She had endured 
Dunstan with a good deal of quiet heroism for 
a long time. She was both repressing and wip- 
ing away her tears while telling herself that 
his worst abusiveness would prove practically 
harmless enough, so long as her aunt’s life 
stayed, protective and defensive, between her 
own and his, when a treble voice, shrill and 
tenuous, rang out fit her side. 

“You’re crying, Cousin Eloise, and I know 
who made you cry. He’s gone out on the lawn, 
looking oh, so mad! I’m so glad he didn’t hit 
you, or anything like that.” 

She caught up the little featherweight body 
of Anita, and pressed her lips against the odd, 
child-woman’s face. 

“You mustn’t say such things, Nita. You 
mustn’t even think them. Why did you leave 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


259 


mamma? I thought you would stay with 
her.” 

“She fell asleep on the lounge. She dozed 
right off while she was telling me a story — 
not a nice one a bit, either. She didn’t tell it 
right. . . Is she going to be just as she was 
when Dr. Moncrieffe came? Oh, I hope not! 
And is he so far away that he can’t be sent 
for?” 

“Hot so far — not so far,” said Eloise, hardly 
knowing that she spoke the words aloud. 

Soon she had carried Anita into the sitting- 
room where Mrs. Thirlwall lay. Her sleep was 
only a light one; she awoke as her niece paused 
by the lounge. 

“Are you still so tired, aunt?” 

“Ho; just this short nap has refreshed me. 

. . . Why, Eloise! what is it? You’re as pale 
as death, dear ! Has Dunstan — ?” 

“How, lie still, aunt.” Eloise sank on her 
knees beside the lounge, clasping one of the 
hands that her kinswoman had frightenedly 
outstretched. “Lie still and I’ll tell you every- 
thing. It isn’t much. He doesn’t want Dr. 
Moncrieffe to come here, and I do. That’s 
about all.” 

She went on, for merciful reasons making the 
late quarrel seem an almost every-day common- 
place beside those actual facts of it which had 
so shaken and wrung her. 

“My dear child,” at length said Mrs. Thirl- 
wall, “you might have known he would hate 
your idea as deeply as he hates the man himself. 


260 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


But don’t bother about my health. If I really 
require Dr. Moncrieffe I’ll send him a line, and 
take the risk of Dunstan’s wrath. A few more 
of his frowns won’t count.” 

But this did not satisfy Eloise. She had 
watched her aunt warily for days, and she 
knew that the old complaint was regaining 
sinister vitality, like a serpent that slowly un- 
coils from its lair. Who knew at what minute 
might come the deadly leap, the buried fangs? 
For her own part, a few more of Dunstan’s 
frowns did not count, either. No, nor would 
his curses and blows (if he should so far soil his 
ideal of a “gentleman”) keep her from serving 
the woman whose noble rescue, years ago, had 
spared her a life of ignorance, penury and possi- 
ble vileness. 

Not far away, at this same moment, Basil 
Moncrieffe was also resolving that no opposi- 
tion on his wife’s part should ever keep him 
from visiting Mrs. Thirlwall and aiding her 
by every kind of ministrant effort. 

He dreaded to approach Elma on the subject. 
She was full of the breeziest geniality; she had 
received him on his return with the blithest of 
smiles and a declaration that he had disap- 
pointed her most agreeably in not having kept 
dinner waiting. “Did you expect that I would 
be late?” he asked. 

“Oh, yes — shamefully. I knew that you 
would have lots to say to your beloved Mag- 
nus.” 

“I did have lots to say.” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


261 


“And is he well?” she asked, with a solici- 
tude so clad in sweetness that it gave him the 
impulse to snatch up one of her hands and press 
it against his lips. 

“He will never be well, you know. But he 
holds his own fairly. I had the encouragement 
of finding him in as good form as I dared to 
expect. That meant a good deal of solid cheer 
to me, as you may suppose.” 

“Of course — of course. How nice! You must 
take me to him. We will go together soon. Or 
I will go alone. I will go and talk with him 
about you.” 

“Talk with him about himself, Elma Tell 
him he looks better, whether you think so or 
not.” 

“But you’ve often said that he’s reconciled 
himself to dying — that he waits for the end 
with a splendid philosophic indifference.” 

“True. I can’t take that back.” 

She fingered at a button on her husband’s 
coat. “I dare say you spoke with him about 
me.” Then she lifted her drooped eyes, which 
brimmed with a kind of penitent vividness. 
“Did you tell him how bad I’ve been?” 

“I told him, Elma . .” 

“Well, well?” she exclaimed, breaking into a 
soft laugh. “ Why do you hesitate?” 

“ Did I hesitate? — I told him how charm- 
ing you are, and in what contagiously joyful 
spirits.” 

Her look searched his face for a second. 

“You’re not in very joyful spirits yourself, 


262 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


Basil. Don’t deny it. You can’t fool me, 
dear, any more than if I were a sprained 
ankle. ’ ’ 

“Allow me to resent that simile, Elma.” 

“Do, if you please. I’ll rejoice in your ami- 
able protest. But — what is it, Basil?” Her 
face, wreathed in smiles, had never been more 
winsome. “This time it isn’t my fault, is it?” 

He kissed her on the forehead, stroking her 
hair with both hands. 

“No. Perhaps, if it is at all, it’s seeing poor 
old Magnus again, and — ” 

“I understand! I understand! Yow you 
care for him, and how I love to have you care 
for him! ” 

He let both hands fondly slide along the lines 
of her shoulders and arms. “I must speak it 
out,” he meditated; “I must speak it right out, 
bold and clear. I must tell her that I’m going 
there to-morrow. God help us both if the ref- 
erence to Eloise brings on another phase of 
rebellious folly! ” 

His hands crept about either of hers, and his 
eyes riveted themselves on her own uplifted 
and glistening gaze. Her mood tempted his 
procrastination, his reluctance. It was like 
something delicate and symmetric and cur- 
vilinear, that a single stroke could destroy. 
He hated to deal the stroke, but not to do so 
would have been contemptibly to compromise 
with his own finer manhood. And to do so 
was like obeying fate itself. Therefore he at 
once spoke. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


263 


XIX. 

To his surprise, when he had ended, she was 
slowly shaking her head from side to side, with 
an air redolent of sympathy. 

“And tbat lovely Mrs. Thirlwall misses your 
medical aid? She is , Basil, without any excep- 
tion, the loveliest woman I’ve ever met. You 
must go to her. You must go to-morrow morn- 
ing.” 

“I’m glad you feel that way, Elma.” 

“Feel that way? Oh, Basil, how otherwise 
could I feel?” She tapped her lowered forehead, 
for a minute, with one hand. “Why shouldn’t 
we go together,” she suddenly burst out — “at 
least on your first visit?” 

Moncrieffe gave the most incredulous of starts. 
“Together? You’re not joking, Elma?” The 
unexpected had been happening with such pell- 
mell speed that he began to have an awful, in- 
sidious doubt of its true quality. What if she 
were only shamming with a kind of composed 
hysteria that would suddenly break its crust of 
calm artifice and spout forth a lava- stream, fre- 
netic with jealousy of poor Eloise? 

But, no. . . “Joking?” she queried, puz- 
zledly. And then, as if doubt had died: “Oh, 
you mean Dunstan f But you forget, Basil, 
that he came to our wedding.” 

“So he did, ” murmured Moncrieffe, in a bland 
torpor of amazement. 


264 A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 

It seemed like a dream to him, the next day, 
when he and Elma entered their carriage and 
were driven along bosky and undulant roads 
back into the country to Greendingle. The 
morning was full of silver-gray clouds, and the 
verdure, in its bounty and ubiquity, took an in- 
tenser accent of tinting, a luxurious rawness of 
green. It was June in another mood, with a 
pout on her lips that could not steal the entice- 
ment from their freshness and balm. 

As the carriage passed into the Thirl wall lawns 
Dunstan chanced to see it without himself being 
seen. A cluster of cedars on a side path hid him 
from view, and luckily, for he both staggered 
and scowled. The carriage was of the victoria 
pattern ; there w r ere two neat-liveried men on the 
box ; the trappings of the horses were showy but 
tasteful. There sat the man he hated beside the 
woman he had tried to marry. The wave of de- 
testation that swept over Dunstan dizzied and 
almost nauseated him. He never forgot that 
implacable moment, through all his after life. 
To natures that cannot love loftily depths of 
hatred are often baleful compensations for this 
deficiency. There were times, through Dun- 
stan’s future experience, when he criticised his 
own hatred as vehement in a plebeian sense. He 
took it up and eyed it and handled it, so to 
speak ; but he never threw it away as a value- 
less possession. He always put it back again in 
his pocket — that capacious pocket of our egotism, 
which is so elastic and commodious for the dep- 
osition of evil wishes and intents. Those few 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


265 


minutes of sickening rage on the lawn of Green - 
dingle made upon him an ineffaceable impress. 
He thought Moncrieffe’s triumph superb; he 
would almost have given a decade out of his 
lifetime to accomplish anything in the same vein 
so malignantly perfect, so hideously complete. 
But this very admiration cast over his soul an 
inky shadow. Its gloom was the darkness of an 
unpropitiable loathing. 

The coming of the Moncrieffes almost stunned 
Eloise. She had begun three notes, that very 
morning, to Basil, and had torn them all up. 
And now, as if by a very somersault of circum- 
stance, here she and her aunt sat in painfully 
formal converse with these two most unexpected 
guests ! 

But Elma soon shattered formality. She left 
her seat, which was at some distance from 
Eloise, and took another, close at the girl’s side. 
Holding one of Eloise’s hands, she motioned for 
her husband to go nearer Mrs. Thirlwall, and 
then supplemented this gesture by words full of 
fiery sweetness. 

“I know you and your former patient have 
lots to say to one another, Basil. But don’t for- 
get to tell her that now you’re back in Riverview 
you’re just as much her doctor as you once were. 
And make the dear thing understand that you’ll 
come here every day if she wants you. Oh, 
Basil’s heard!” (This with a shaken finger at 
Mrs. Thirlwall.) “His friend, Magnus White- 
wright, has told him! You’re not as well as 
you look. He did wonders for you once, and 


266 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


he’s going to do them again ! Aren’t you, Ba- 
sil?” 

Without waiting for an answer, she suddenly 
rose and in a smiling way forced Eloise from 
her seat by the hand that she still clasped. 
“Come,” she rattled on, “let’s leave them to- 
gether for a talk. We’ll go out on the piazza a 
while — or on the lawn, if you will. It’s so pretty 
and wild, here — so different from The Terraces, 
where everything is tended and trimmed and 
clipped half to death. . . Come, won’t you?” 

“Most willingly,” said Eloise. Her heart was 
so full of gratitude, now, at the prospective med- 
ical counselings of Moncrieffe, that she could 
have kissed Elma to show it. And besides, she 
had never disliked this woman who had mar- 
ried the man she loved. It was hard for Eloise 
to dislike any one. She had her indignations, 
her antipathies, her revolts ; but personal fem- 
inine rancors lost themselves in the largeness 
of her nature. It could no more accommodate 
them with definiteness than the mountain- gorge 
into which one casts a pebble. 

She felt a little embarrassed when she had 
snatched a hat and wrap from familiar nooks in 
a hall-closet and gone out with Elma into the 
rather crisp air of this cloudy June day. But 
Mrs. Moncrieffe’s very volatility and garrulity 
soon in part restored her ease. 

“Do you know, I just hungered to have my 
husband come over and see your aunt when I 
heard that she wasn’t so well again?” 

“That was very kind of you, Mrs. Moncrieffe.” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


267 


“Doesn’t it sound queer, that ‘Mrs. Mon- 
crieffe’? I somehow can't get used to it. . . 
You’re looking well.” And she turned upon 
Eloise one of those amiable sidelong glances with 
which women mask the sharpest scrutiny of each 
other. “ Are you?” 

“I’m quite well, thanks.” 

“And your cousin — er — Dunstan, you know. 
Is he here or in town just now?” 

“He’s here. But he went out for a stroll a 
little while ago. Perhaps he may return before 
you leave.” 

“I hope he will,” said Elma, with a sort of 
colorless affability. “I should like to see him 
again. I merely shook hands with him, as it 
were, on the day of my wedding. He was like 
everybody else, that day, a phantom that came 
and went.” 

“You mean you were excited?” Eloise rather 
timidly replied. 

•“Oh, that’s no name for it! And yet I was 
outwardly as calm ! You’ve never been mar- 
ried. You don’t know how the ceremony and 
all the bustle make one feel. But you will marry 
before long. Of course you will.” 

“I?” 

“Why not? You’re of the marrying kind; 
I’m sure you are.” They had got out on the 
lawn, by this time, and Elma paused at the door 
of a little summer-house which was one tangle 
of creepers. She pointed with her parasol into 
the sweet, shaded interior, whose rustic circu- 
lar seat seemed to wait the occupancy of some 


268 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


idler, with a book to be read and mused upon 
amid the green-glimmering gloom. 

“Now, there!” she softly exclaimed. “That 
just expresses the peace and poetry which you 
should have in your marriage. I somehow see 
in your face, whenever I watch it closely, that 
you’re fitted for the loveliest and most domestic 
of lots.” 

Eloise, coloring, answered: “Oh, I should say 
no woman could ever be happy as a wife unless 
she found both peace and poetry in her marriage. ” 

Elma reached out one of her long- gloved hands 
and picked a leaf from the fluttering maze of 
greenery at her side. She began slowly to tear 
the leaf to pieces while she said : 

“It ought to be like that with every woman. 
I believe it would be like that with you.” She 
flung away the last fragment of the leaf and 
faced Eloise abruptly. “I’m going to say some- 
thing to you that I’m afraid you won’t like. But 
I can’t help saying it. And — it’s this: I — I al- 
ways feel, somehow, as if you might have made 
him a thousand-times better wife than I ever 
have done or ever could do. ’ ’ 

Eloise receded a step or two. She looked dis- 
tressed; her eyes were sparkling troublously. 
“What a strange thing for you to tell me!” she 
faltered. 

“I’m always telling everybody strange things. 
I’ve gone through li^e that way.” Elma gave a 
little elfish sort of laugh, now, that died sud- 
denly, at high pitch, as if some aggressive sound 
had cut it short there. “And I could tell you 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


2G9 


stranger things than that,” she hurried on, with 
feverish precipitation. “I could tell you that I 
sometimes reproach myself horribly for not let- 
ting matters work themselves out — for nipping 
events in the bud — for producing violent climax 
instead of being permissive and submissive as 
concerned the acceptance of natural, human, un- 
molested results. . . Is this clear? No? Well, 
I can make it clearer, then. I can — ” 

“Don’t!” dropped from Eloise. She raised a 
hand, as if in warning and entreaty. Her face 
was aflame, and there were little tremors at the 
softest part of her throat, just under the rounded 
yet firm- carved chin. 

“You don’t want me to speak another word on 
the subject!” cried Elma, again laughing oddly. 
“And yet I see that you do understand me, won- 
drously well. . . Bah!” she broke off, with a 
random wave of her parasol in the air, “how 
could you fail to? He liked you enormously, 
and you knew it. Of course you knew it. You’re 
a woman, and you must have had it all by heart 
long before he concluded to let me marry him.” 

“Mrs. Moncrieffe!” 

But Elma dashed on. “How pretty you are 
when you blush like that ! I wish I could ever 
be so pretty. You’re — you’re such a woman ! 
I often think I’m half mannish in my style; I 
haven’t that femininity of yours, tender yet 
strong. I envied it in you from the first. For 
I used to be fearfully jealous of you, you know 
—or perhaps you’re too high-minded ever to 
have known.” 


270 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“Oh, please don’t speak like this.” 

“I will — I will! I repeat it; I feel cruel, and 
I repeat it, Eloise Thirlwall. I used to be fear- 
fully jealoqs of you.” 

“Mrs. Moncrieffe — ” 

“I’m jealous of you still! I mean — at times. . . 
Now and then I think there’s a sort of witeh-like 
clairvoyance in me that tells me I’d have been a 
million-fold happier if I’d never had. . . Butm7Z 
you tell me something? Will you?” She caught 
Eloise by the wrist, not rudely, but with excited 
force. “I’m sure of one thing — that he liked you 
ever so much. But did he ever make love to you ? 
Did he? did he? Are you angry at me? I don’t 
care if you are. But did he? did he?” 

Eloise snatched her hand away. She had now 
that air of dignity and wholesome pride which a 
woman of well-ordered temperament and char- 
acter will always show in contrast to the hys- 
teric addresses of one less sanely balanced. 

“No.” 

She answered with decision and without ire, 
though not by any means tranquilly. And in 
another moment she passed away, leaving her 
companion to 'stare after her, at the door of the 
leaf-muffled summer-house, with a smile as bit- 
ter, as tragic, as ridiculously triumphant as was 
her own wayward, insoluble nature. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


271 


XX. 

Eloise moved quickly on. She was so shocked 
and wounded that it made her dizzy to think, 
and once or twice the lilacs and flowering 
almonds looked to her as if they were dancing 
mazourkas and quadrilles. She had got a good 
distance from the summer-house, following a 
bend in the pathway, when at last she paused, 
being deeply flushed and somewhat out of breath. 
In another instant Elma came hurrying after her. 

“Oh, do forgive me — please do!” she cried. 
‘ ‘ I was idiotic ; I know it ; I realize it. And if 
you do forgive me, you’ll keep my nonsense a 
secret, will you not? Say that you will ! Please 
say that you will!” 

Here she kissed Eloise on each burning cheek, 
and began to press and earnestly shake the two 
hands that she had seized, bending over them as 
one will do in earnest farewell or welcome. . . 

At this same moment Moncrieffe, seated be- 
side Mrs. Thirlwall, was saying : 

“There is a change in you. But I am very 
hopeful as to certain new remedies, concerning 
which I both read and heard in Paris. I’ll keep 
a steady watch on you; I’ll come three times a 
week at the very least — and oftener if I’m 
wanted.” 

“But you’re not practicing again. Or have 
you concluded that you must practice?” 


272 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“Oh, no. Elm a would not hear of it. At 
least I imagine not. She was very downright, 
before our marriage, in her desire that I should 
quite give up my profession. ’ ’ 

“Then this is all out of kindness. How good 
of you, and how like you!” Her violet eyes were 
sparkling, and her large, full-lipped, matronly 
mouth bubbled over with her own peculiar lova- 
ble smile, that glimpsed the fresh rows of perfect 
teeth. There had always been something about 
this woman that Moncrieffe revered, and his 
reverence had always been mingled with an 
affection of that tender type which holds in it 
the tinges of ardent sentiment as a twilight will 
retain those of bounteous day. 

“Don’t call it ‘good,’ ” he said. “It’s merely 
a natural act, like eating one’s breakfast.” 

“Sometimes one hasn’t much actual appetite 
for one’s breakfast.” 

“You shall have yours restored to you. I’m 
going to bring it back again.” 

“And you’re coming — as often — as that?” 
Her words were delivered lingeringly, with an 
accent of sweet surprise. 

“Can’t I come if I want?” he said, with a 
light, mock- irritated shrug. 

“What a question! But suppose. . .” 

“Suppose Dunstan should be odious again? 
Do you mean that he may be?” 

“No. Not openly. Dunstan’s darker side is 
rarely shown to the outward world, and of this 
he would rank you as a part.” 

“Well, then? There’s no other objection to 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


273 


my coming, is there? — to my constantly watch- 
ing and caring for you?” 

“ None, ” said Mrs. Thirlwall, below her breath, 
while she laid a hand on his arm, the very gen- 
tleness of her touch harmonizing inexplainably 
with the fervor of search in her eyes. “None, 
my dear boy, unless your wife should — protest.” 

“Protest? Elma? Why, she’s here with me 
to-day. You saw that. She wished to come. I 
brought her at her own request.” 

Mrs. Thirlwall gravely nodded several times. 
“But will she wish to come every day, when 
you do?” 

“No. Of course not.” Their eyes had met; 
he dropped his before he again spoke. “And if 
she doesn’t?” 

There was now a silence between them. Start- 
lingly the lady broke it. “Basil Moncrieffe, 
when you married your wife you were in love 
with Eloise.” 

“Ah! You tell me so!” broke from him, in 
aggrieved undertone. 

“You remember that I told you so once be- 
fore? I had felt it — divined it. And as for you, 
my friend, you did not then deny it. If — if 
everything is altered now, I shall be more than 
glad. Make it clear to me, will you, whether 
everything is altered or not?” 

He drew himself up a little, not offendedly, 
but with a certain plain sternness. “My dear 
lady, I am as happy as I deserve to be.” 

“Ah, that’s ambiguous,” she murmured. 
“We all deserve to be happy, from one point of 


274 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


view. Believe me, if you have still any of that 
old feeling for Eloise it would be better that I 
should never profit by these visits with which 
you so generously propose to aid me! There 
would be danger — danger!” And she bowed her 
head, faintly shivering. 

“Danger!” he cried. “What! to her from 
me?” 

“To both of ybu from one another.” 

“You’re sure, then, that Eloise — ?” 

“I’m no more sure of Eloise’s heart than you 
are. If she had ever cared for you, if she cared 
for you still, she would rather die than disclose 
it.” 

“Even to you?” 

“Even to me — unless I -sought to wring it 
from her, which I should never do. ” 

“Content yourself,” he announced, rather 
curtly, after a pause. “I’m a staid old married 
man, now.” # 

“And securely, satisfyingly, in love with your 
wife?” 

“Ah, what a question to put any man! If 
your Eloise were Heloise, and I, her Abelard, 
had wedded her, wouldn’t it be perilous, even a 
few months after wedlock, to demand the an- 
swer to a question so radical?” 

“Come, come; I know that tone of evasive 
levity. Recollect that you’re talking to a world- 
worn old woman.” 

“You must pardon me if T plead forgetfulness 
of any such fact. ’ ’ 

“Gallantry will not serve you to masquerade 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


275 


in,” she said, with a lifted forefinger. “But I 
won’t beg confidences. I recall how men hate a 
woman’s curiosity.” 

“Some men hate some women’s. I could 
never hate yours.” 

“You mean you’ll tolerate it, my dear boy, 
but you won’t gratify it.” 

“Good Heavens !” he exclaimed, with a restive 
gesture, “do you want me to acknowledge that 
I married Elma for her money?” 

She gave a hurt start. “I’ve always believed 
you did not. I’ve always believed that she 
married you because she passionately loved 
you.” 

He smiled with grimness. “And I hope 
you’ve said that to these carping, gossiping folk 
here in River view whenever you had a chance 
to stand up for me. It wouldn’t have been the 
truth, but it would have been better than to have 
them unmolestedly denounce me as a second- 
hand Pinckney Cassilis. The truth is,” he pur- 
sued, with somber heat, “that I’ve never told 
you the truth. I’ve never told you that I went 
to The Terraces on the night I became engaged 
to Elma, with a letter in my pocket asking Eloise 
to marry me.” Pie spoke right on, after that, 
and left nothing unconfessed. Every past tor- 
ment of his brief married life he laid bare. Then 
he spoke, with a certain tone of tepid comfort, 
about his wife’s present reformatory change. 
“God knows how long it will last,” he ended, 
or seemed to end. In another second he broke 
forth again, however. “I don’t know if I’ve 


276 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


made it clear to you that I could not do otherwise 
than I did.” 

“Could not?” she repeated, not incredulously, 
yet wonderingly. 

“Could not! A power outside of myself was 
at work. There is always such a power outside 
of ourselves. Sometimes it leaves us unscathed, 
or seems to leave us, for years at a stretch. In 
my case it gripped me and flung me down, like 
an athlete of thrice my weight and skill. It’s 
Tennyson, isn’t it, who sings of the ‘wrestling 
thews that threw the world’? Ah, that wasn’t 
one of his wise lines; it was merely brilliant 
and showy. . . Don’t you grant I’m right? 
You pitied me, you were exquisite in your sym- 
pathy, when I spoke of my engagement that 
morning, just after its toils had got their tangle 
round me. You thought me a kind of erring 
fellow-creature, then, and your big heart went 
out to me in forgiveness. Does not your big 
brain see now that I did nothing to be forgiven 
for ?” 

She looked at him steadily. “It sees that the 
woman who got you is an unwomanly vixen. 
That’s mild, but I’m not good at calling names, 
so let it suffice for vituperation. I thought her 
wild, eccentric, at times outwardly Amazonian, 
even; but I never dreamed she could trail her 
maidenly self-respect so piteously in the dirt!” 

Moncrieffe drew back, while the color surged 
to his temples. “I — I’ve defended myself,” he 
stammered, “too recklessly. I should have 
spared her; I — ” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


277 


‘‘She did not spare you — nor Eloise, either!” 
rang from Mrs. Thirlwall, and more resentfully 
than he remembered ever to have heard her 
speak. * i But have no fear, ’ ’ she went on, with 
voice promptly mellowing into its native music. 
“Your confidences shall remain inviolate. Still, 
you must not come here as my physician. After 
what you have told me I dare not let you come. ’ ’ 

“I will come,” he insisted. 

“You must not.” 

“I will — I will! You spoke of danger. There 
is none. I’d guard that girl of yours with my 
life.” 

A desolate laugh answered him. “That’s be- 
cause you’re in love with her. . . Hush ! I heard 
Elma’s voice. They’re coming this way.” She 
rose, with a melancholy and entreating little 
wave of both hands. “I cannot allow it. Re- 
member — I forbid it.” 

“And I will not obey your veto.” He repeated 
these words, and then added : “You can arrange, 
if you will, that Eloise and I shall never meet. 
But such arrangement would be preposterous. 
Good God ! I begin to think that you, the most 
large- natured woman I’ve ever met, would class 
me as the sorriest of cads.” 

“Ah, no, no! And from what I’ve heard I 
judge you so differently now ! I see you in such 
a new light!” 

“Thanks — from my soul, thanks! Magnus 
Whitewright, dear friend though he is, doesn’t 
see me that way. It’s reserved for a spirit finely 
liberal as yours to accept my sworn testimony, 


278 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


odd though this may sound. Now, not another 
word against my coming here as your physician. 
I’ll send you a prescription this afternoon. And 
that question of diet — be rigidly ascetic there. . . 
Hush; they are returning. You must save all 
your opposition for my next visit, day after to- 
morrow. ’ ’ 

At his final word a light cry sounded in one of 
the doorways. The next instant Elma and Eloise 
appeared. And in her most jocund treble tones 
Elma was saying : 

‘ c Greendingle is worth twenty of The Ter- 
races! It’s wilder and twice as picturesque. 
And as for its not being near the river — oh, that 
tiresome old river ! There are times when I al- 
most hate it for monopolizing so much attention, 
and putting on so many airs, and snubbing all 
the rest of the nice, unpretentious landscape!” 


XXI. 

While they drove home together, that day, 
Moncrieffe noticed in his wife a restlessness both 
of air and speech. Still, however, she had many 
amiable things to say of Eloise and Mrs. Thirl- 
wall, and once or twice she expressed keen pleas- 
ure at the thought that Basil would hereafter 
bend his best medical skill toward the improve- 
ment of the latter’s health. 

At luncheon she complained that she had lost 
all appetite. “Isn’t it odd?” she said to her 


A MARTYR OP DESTINY. 


279 


father. 1 1 During the drive back I felt quite 
hungry.” Her eyes, while she thus spoke, did 
not meet those of her husband, though he was 
watching her with covert intentness. A change 
in her face had struck him as peculiar. 

“Take a sip of this champagne, El,” said her 
father. “It’s done my dyspepsy lots o’ good. 
It’s as dry as soda-water.” 

The servant poured her out a glass, and she 
slowly drank it. Her look turned toward Mon- 
crieffe, now. “If the Thirl walls would go and 
live in New York instead of here, and meet more 
people, Basil, don’t you believe Eloise would 
marry?” 

In an instant Moncrieffe recognized the old 
irritant, aggressive tone. It was muffled in 
suavity, but he felt it as one feels the sinew of 
a hand beneath a velvety glove. He was con- 
scious that she expected some sort of betrayal 
in his look. For this reason he strove not to 
give her the faintest gleam of one ; and hence 
his concealing effort may have become at least 
vaguely patent. 

"“I don’t know, Elma. A girl like that, so 
modest and refined, surely ought to marry.” 

Here Mr. Blagdon, scenting trouble, looked 
hideously uncomfortable, and gave a doleful 
cough. 

“Oh, I guess she’ll go off pretty soon, any- 
how ,” he bustled. “She’s the kind that does, 
pretty complected, but not a bit stylish. She 
ain’t got any of the fine lady about her, like 
you, El.” 


280 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


This propitiating attempt wrung from Mon- 
crieffe an involuntary frown. But he only said, 
looking squarely and with much mildness at his 
wife: 

■‘Won’t you try to eat some of that chicken? 
It’s very palatable.” 

“No,” she said, still sipping the champagne. 

“Have some bouillon made, then. It’s better 
than going without any luncheon. ’ ’ 

“No,” she repeated, • and set her glass down, 
almost drained. “I wish I hadn’t taken even 
the wine. It’s gone to my head, somehow. It’s 
set my head aching horridly.” 

“It couldn’t have been that, ” said Moncrieffe; 
“the wine wouldn’t have acted so quickly.” 

“Perhaps it wasn’t that; perhaps it was some- 
thing else,” exclaimed Elma. She may have 
been going to tell him of the turbid outburst 
which she had begged Eloise not to mention. 
But some new mood, if this were true, gave her 
pause — or possibly some new access of pain. 

In a few more minutes she rose from the table, 
declaring that her head was racked with tor- 
ment. Moncrieffe followed her from the room, 
and spent the next two hours in anxious vigil 
beside her bed. 

“It’s neurallerger, ain’t it?” asked Mr. Blag- 
don, when told that she was now resting quietly 
after a good deal of suffering. 

“No,” said Moncrieffe. “Not that.” He 
looked at the old man, pitying him as the cor- 
ners of his mouth sagged downward in alarm. 
“It’s more serious than neuralgia.” Then he 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


281 


spoke further, feeling it his duty to be candid, 
and knowing that every new word he uttered 
was a dagger-stroke to him who heard it. “And 
so, you see, this blinding headache means more 
than I should care to let Elma learn.” 

“Oh, no, no!” quavered Blagdon. Don’ t tell 
her, for God’s sake ! You — you say you knew 
about it before? In Paris? Why — why the 
devil didn’t you tell me then ? I’d have had 
every famous doctor in the city spend hours 
with her, if they’d each cost a thousand francs 
a second!” 

“It wasn’t very pleasant news to give you, Mr. 
Blagdon. Besides, I had strong hopes that the 
accursed, insidious thing might completely van- 
ish. As for famous doctors, we’ve a few here, 
please recollect — and some very excellent ones 
besides; for ability and celebrity haven’t always 
the same meaning either in medicine or else- 
where. But Elma refuses to see any other phy- 
sician. She told me this, very positively, just 
before she fell asleep.” 

“She’s out t>f danger now?” eagerly ques- 
tioned Blagdon. 

“Yes. The present attack has passed. If it 
had become fatal there would have been that 
coma against which the best science is power- 
less. But the terrible headache ended in semi- 
stupor. To-morrow she may be almost like her- 
self again — weak, but astonishingly better.” 

“And to-morrow,” stoutly affirmed Blagdon, 
with agony in his tear-misted eyes, “we’ve got 
to have the best specialists money can bring to 


282 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY". 


Riverview. Just let me talk to El! I’ll bring 
her round in no time.” 

But on the morrow, 'when Elma was clearly 
better, and when her father did “talk” to her, 
•he was met by the austerest opposition. 

“Basil, if you please, papa, is all the doctor I 
want. If I were truly ill, which I’m not and 
haven’t ever been — I should allow no other phy- 
sician to attend me. So, there, now, please; 
don’t again refer to the subject.” 

During all this day Blagdon put to his son-in- 
law many furtive and solicitous questions. Mon- 
crieffe answered them conscientiously. But all 
the time he realized that his listener’s paternal 
love conspired with his amazement to create a 
vigorous if gradual skepticism. “I see,” ran 
his thoughts. “The old man passionately rebels 
against the idea that his worshiped child could 
be afflicted by a mortal disease. This is entirely 
natural. And it is equally natural that in his 
grief and consternation he should hug to himself 
the comforting fact of my professional inexperi- 
ence. Heaven knows, I would be glad enough 
to have him bring, on a salary, to Riverview as 
many renowned specialists as his fat purse could 
convene here. It would rid me of a responsi- 
bility which threatens to grow more and more 
irksome.” 

Elma’s recovery was rapid, almost startling. 
That afternoon she received a number of guests 
who drifted into The Terraces. Her laughter 
rang bold and gay ; she said extravagant things 
in her old unconventional style. “Your wife,” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


283 


whispered Mrs. Cassilis to Moncrieffe, “is the 
same dear, original creature as before. Neither 
marriage nor foreign travel has altered her a bit. 
My husband (I don’t know if you ever suspected 
it) has always admired her so much ! Really, if 
I were a jealous wife I might have been glad 
when she was safely married. But, thank 
Heaven, I don’t know how it feels to be jealous, 
and whatever may be Pinckney’s faults, he has 
never shown any desire to enlighten me.” 

This decorative little piece of hypocrisy fell 
rather flat on Moncrieffe. He hardly had either 
ears or eyes for the guests that came and went, 
that afternoon. Apprehension gloomed his 
spirits. If Elma physically could take him so 
unprepared, might he not expect from her, in a 
mental sense, some new shock at any mo- 
ment? 

On the following day his dread became reality. 
The carriage was at the door; a servant had just 
handed him his overcoat and hat, for the weather 
still stayed fresh until a swift sweep of heat 
should bring us our wonted American summer. 
On a sudden Elma appeared in the hall, coming 
from one of the side rooms. She held a book be- 
neath her arm, and her tawny, fluffy hair had a 
tell-tale rumpled look. 

“You’ve been dozing in the library,” he said, 
affably. “I saw you all curled up on one of the 
big lounges. The multiplicity of cushions gave 
you a half-smothered appearance ; you made me 
think of a nineteenth-century Desdemona. So I 
concluded to go away and not wake you.” 


284 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“To go away?” she repeated, without any 
.trace of a smile. “Where were you going?” 

“Why, to Greendingle. Don’t you remember? 
This is the day for my next visit there.” 

“Yes.” . . She .spoke absently. In another 
moment she added: “Just come in here for a 
little while before you start.” He had not time 
to respond, she shot so quickly back into the 
library, closing the door after her. 

“Sh§ has something to say that she does not 
wish overheard by servants,” he told himself; 
and a slow chill crept through his veins. “What 
can it be this time?” 

He found her seated on the edge of the huge 
lounge where she had lately lain asleep. At least 
twenty cushions were tossed about on the deep, 
tufted ledge of silk behind her. Their radiant 
tints of texture and broidery contrasted keenly 
with the grave appointments of the chamber, 
full of oaken bookshelves and surmounted by a 
groined ceiling, oaken as well. 

“I’ve changed my mind about your going to 
Greendingle,” she said, when he had closed the 
door behind him and approached her. 

“Changed your mind, Elma?” 

“Yes. You mustn’t go. It’s all wrong.” 

“All wrong?” 

“Don’t keep echoing me, please. It’s all 
wrong, I said, and I say it again.” 

“But so short a while since, Elma, you were 
anxious that I should pay these visits — partly 
friendly, but chiefly professional.” 

“I’ve thought it all over, and my mind is 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


285 


changed. The visits, from a friendly and pro- 
fessional standpoint, are all right. But from 
another standpoint ...” She paused, and the 
look that she lifted to his glittered viciously. 

“From what other standpoint?” he said, go- 
ing quite close to her. 

She drooped her gaze, but locked her lips in a 
kind of smoldering smile, that was full both of 
sullenness and satire. 

Moncrieffe repeated his question. Then, find- 
ing it still unanswered, he spoke with a suavity 
none the less tender because factitious. 

“My dear Elma, this is only some fancy that 
springs from your illness.” 

“I’m not ill!” she exclaimed, heatedly. “I 
never felt better than I feel now. You were 
once very devoted to Eloise Thirlwall, and your 
going again and again, like this, to the house 
where she lives, will cause talk. Not that I care 
for the talk — I despise it. But I can’t help car- 
ing whether you go or not. You shan’t, you 
must not go.” And she rose, fiery, imperious. 

“I shall certainly go,” Moncrieffe stated. 

“Against my will? Against my command?” 

“I shall certainly go. Your attempt to stop 
me is cruel to your friend, Mrs. Thirlwall.” 

“But not cruel to Eloise!” And she gave a 
high, bitter laugh. 

“This,” said Moncrieffe, “is not like your 
repentant promises that day in the Hotel Bal- 
moral. ” 

“Ah, you fling that unhappy time back into 
my face!” 


286 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“Who made it an unhappy time? Surely not 
I. Nor am I flinging it back into your face. . . 
However, I will not prolong so absurd a dispute. 
My errand to Mrs. Thirlwall is one of mercy.” 

He walked to the door. As he did so she 
darted after him and caught the knob. Thus 
clutching it, she faced him. “You shan’t go 
there in my carriage — in my father’s carriage.” 

Moncrieffe grew pale. “Be careful,” he 
warned, “or I will never set foot in one of your 
own or your father’s carriages again.” 

The quiet intensity of this threat told with her. 
She moved away from the door, with a sudden 
half-savage sob. He at once opened the door, 
and while standing near its threshold said across 
his shoulder : 

“You’re a sick woman, Ehna. You’ve been 
more seriously attacked than you may have 
guessed. Excitement like this can only harm 
you. Be reasonable; strive to control yourself, 
and when we next meet show me (I beg of you, 
for both our sakes) that you have succeeded.” 

He went straight out upon the lawn, after 
that, and entered the waiting carriage. His 
drive to Greendingle was full of distressing 
thoughts. Here again, he mused, was the hand 
of that same evil fate which had before so 
roughly marred his fortunes under the guise of 
bettering them. He would not have hesitated 
to leave The Terraces, now, for good and all, had 
not the fact of Elma’s disordered health enjoined 
such a course. Was it really she herself who 
treated him in this wildly arrogant fashion? 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


287 


Was it not the poisoning malady that had cap- 
tured her? Were her physical state a normal 
one he might justifiably have ceased to live with 
her. Could he justifiably cease to live with her 
now? 

No ; both as her husband and her physician 
his place should be near her and his attitude one 
of submission, toleration, patience. But what a 
vista of positive future anguish did those three 
words shadow forth ! Indeed here was a martyr- 
dom of destiny, portrayed as if with tinges 
wrought from blended blood and tears. He must 
go on living with this woman — must for years 
go on living with her — conscious that she was 
mad yet sane, ill yet well, subject at any moment 
to the assault of a complaint which might afflict 
either body or mind with unsparing violence. 

He had never loved her so well (perhaps he 
had indeed never really loved her at all) that he 
could now repress the longing to have her die 
and end his odious thraldom, with its ghastly 
promises and perspectives. But he was large 
and fine and manful enough to feel twinges of 
poignant self-rebuke for having this longing visit 
him. Then came the despairful question, sound- 
ing the depths of his forlorn spirit: “How can I 
help a desire which springs spontaneously from 
a natural unrest, a natural revolt?” By the time 
that the carriage reached Greendingle, nothing 
except a vital sense of duty toward Mrs. Thirl- 
wall prevented him from returning home with- 
out having entered her gates. 

He had an odd sensation of guilt when Eloise 


288 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


met him in the sitting-room. This he quickly 
Shook off, as not merely absurd in itself but un- 
just to the pure and lovely girl whose presence 
had dawned upon him with a strange mixture 
of pain and joy. 

She ga ve him her hand, but it was easy to dis- 
cern in her air constraint and coldness. With- 
out cutting him short she somehow seemed to 
do so, and brought him upstairs into the bed- 
chamber of her aunt in a way coolly expeditious 
enough to have drawn from him, at almost any 
other time, a challenging query as to its cause. 

Mrs. Thirlwall, who was lying on a lounge 
near one of the windows, gave him a sweet smile. 
As he seated himself at her side, Eloise slipped 
from the room. 

“Your pulse is not quite as I expected to find 
it,” he said, breaking a pause. “There’s been 
some fresh excitement? Frankly, yes or no?” 

“Yes,” she slowly replied. 

He met her eyes. “Dunstan again?” 

She nodded, sighing. “Dunstan again — as 
you say. Don’t ask me any more.” 

“I surmise the rest. He has resented my com- 
ing here.” 

“Resented! Ah, that’s to put it mildly. He 
has been insolent ; he has said atrocious things. 
I was resolute — and I fear my wretched pulse 
has paid the cost.” 

Moncrieffe knitted his brows. “I must speak 
with your son.” Below his breath, and a little 
gruffly, he added: “I must have it out with 
him.” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


289 


“ You ! Don’t dream of such a thing. If you 
do, you’re not my friend.” 

“Oh, I mean no hot quarrel — no quarrel at 
all, in fact. I mean — ” 

“Hush!” she interrupted. “He’s dashed off 
to town in dreadful dudgeon. If he had not I 
would have written you not to come. ’ ’ 

“But I must have come — I must keep on com- 
ing,” said Moncrieffe, with placid firmness. 
“And as for meeting him again, the sooner the 
better. Any insult from him I am prepared to 
meet also. And for your sake, believe me, I 
should push self-control and tolerance to their 
utmost limits. But no conceivable rebuff would 
prevent me from regarding you and not him as 
the real master here. No matter what he said, 
or even did, I should visit you regularly, just the 
same. Still” (and now Moncrieffe spoke slower 
and more significantly), “if you once were to 
tell me that he and not you held the mastership, 
there would be no choice for me but to retire.” 

“He will never hold the mastership while I 
live. Not that I would not surrender it to him 
to-morrow but for Eloise.” 

“I understand you perfectly.” 

They talked together for a good half-hour, and 
when Moncrieffe took his leave it was with posi- 
tive pangs of depression. “You must see me; 
you must let me come again; you need me,” 
were his parting words. 

Hardly had he reached the lower hall when 
Eloise joined him. He saw a question in her 
earnest eyes, and straightway answered it. 


290 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“Your aunt is not so well. She tells me that 
there has been trouble between herself and her 
son.” 

“There has been grave trouble,” said Eloise. 

“And it concerns my coming here?” 

“Yes,” she replied, lingeringly; “yes.” 

His eyes dwelt on her face, womanly, human, 
not beautiful, yet so much more than merely 
beautiful. He thought of Elma, and the differ- 
ence between these two became a dagger, bury- 
ing itself in his heart. 

“I want to bring your aunt round again,” he 
said. “I’m going to try. But if Dunstan Thirl- 
wall keeps undoing all my good work as fast as 
I perform it, the task will be impossible. ’ ’ 

“That is so true ! If there could only be some 
way of keeping him in town ! Aunt Emily is 
agonized by his incessant persecutions.” 

Their eyes met for a moment. Eloise drooped 
hers. A hundred things that he might say be- 
sieged Moncrieffe. But with his usual self-dis- 
cipline he repressed all impulse to touch upon 
those associations which were already an actual 
past both to himself and her, while still so recent 
that the term seemed hyperbole. 

“Your aunt,” he said, “is the sweetest, the 
most enchanting of women. She is more — she 
is the most large-hearted and forgiving.” 

That last word escaped him almost unawares. 
Eloise repeated it, with interrogation and sur- 
prise that were perhaps equally involuntary. 

“Forgiving? Do you mean that she keeps 
always forgiving Dunstan?” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


291 


“No. . . I — Well, yes. Dunstan, if you 
please — yes.” 

Eloise shook her head. “She’s very angry at 
him, sometimes.” 

“No doubtr I — I’ve known her to be lenient 
in other ways, however.” An irresistible feeling 
made him add: “She’s been very lenient to me , 
and in a matter where she might have shown 
great harshness. Of all people she might have 
been least expected to forgive — of all people ex- 
cept one.” 

It was said; and after saying it he made a 
movement toward the open hall- door. Then the 
changing color of Eloise, and a tremor about her 
lips, detained him. 

“I — I didn’t know,” she stammered, “that 
your intimacy with Aunt Emily was so great.” 

“She hasn’t told you, then?” he said, off his 
guard because her voice, look, posture, presence 
had thus wrought with him. “I fancied she 
wouldn’t tell you. It was so like her to hold it 
all as a sacred confession. And they say,” he 
went on, with a nervous throb of laughter, “that 
women can’t keep secrets ! Such women as she 
can keep them, though Heaven knows that such 
women are rarer than black swans!” 

“Still, women are curious,” she challenged 
him, falteringty. “They recoil from mystifica- 
tions.” 

He strove ta catch her vivid eyes, but they 
looked past him, beyond him, suiting the flur- 
ried innuendo of her words. 

“I’d tell you the substance of my confession,” 


292 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


he let himself recklessly answer. “I’d tell you 
what I told her, if I thought it would give you 
the faintest comfort.” 

“Comfort?” she repeated, with a vague curl- 
ing of the lip. “Why should it give me com- 
fort?” 

“Only for one reason.” 

“Well?” She drew away from him, several 
paces, perhaps unconsciously. 

“Only for one reason,” he said again, and 
with a speed that was headlong. “Only if my 
marriage caused you — pain.” 

Her brows clouded. “What was your mar- 
riage to me, Dr. Moncrieffe?” 

“A matter of indifference, no doubt,” he hur- 
ried. “And yet when I pledged myself to marry 
Elma Blagdon — when I allowed personal fasci- 
nation to overmaster me — when I yielded to her 
and forgot you — ” 

“Dr. Moncrieffe!” . 

“Yes, I will say it, Eloise! She caught me 
in a kind of magic net. Other men have been 
fools, I suppose, and I linked my name to the 
fatuous list. It was not her wealth, or her fath- 
er’s ; I never dreamed of such incentive. It was 
the madness and folly of an enticement your 
purity would not comprehend. I told your aunt, 
I told Magnus Whitewright, that I was blame- 
lessly entangled into the making of this mar- 
riage. But I can’t look on you* and say so. It 
seems, now, that if I said so I must be lying.” 

“Dr. Mon—” 

“Lying — yes ! And to you the one woman on 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


293 


earth that I can and do love perfectly — the one 
woman on earth that I shall go on loving per- 
fectly while life is left to me!” 

He had drooped his eyes a little as he spoke 
these rash words. When he lifted them to her 
face he saw that it vras deathly pale. 

“If almost any man but you had spoken to 
me like this,” Eloise answered, “I should have 
called him cowardly.” 

“Cowardly!” 

“Yes. To the woman he had married.” She 
raised one hand, with an air of unutterable re- 
gret and reproach. Then, suddenly turning 
away, she hurried from the hall, leaving him 
alone there, pierced by remorse and shame. 


XXII. 

Continuance of this mood agonized Mon- 
crieffe during his return to The Terraces. He 
kept asking himself, with unsparing ferocity of 
rebuke, if a malevolent fate were blamable for 
his recent foolhardy act. He satirized his own 
conduct with unpitying stress. Here indeed was 
a fine example of that martyrdom to destiny of 
which he had talked in such pompous phrase! 
For once at least the chance had been vouch- 
safed him of opposing resistent circumstance 
fairly and squarely with the vigor of an un- 
trammeled volition. And how admirably, how 
chivalrously had he stood the test! Eloise’s 


294 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


word, “cowardly,” kept ringing in his ears. 
Did it not wound him all the worse because con- 
scious of having richly deserved it? Where was 
his boasted stoicism now? Ah, with what 
heroic fortitude had he faced the first temptation 
which this predetermined series of Samaritan 
visits had brought about ! W ai ve treachery to 
Elma . . . What of treachery to Mrs. Thirl- 
wall? He had forced her to believe in him, and 
how much handsome fidelity had he paid to this 
compulsory trust ! 

He had scarcely found himself within the big 
lower hall of The Terraces when Blagdon met 
him there. 

“Look here, Basil,’ 7 blurted forth his father- 
in-law, with agitated speed, “I guess El’s in a 
pretty bad way again. She kind o’ got a fit of 
hysterics after you drove off. She flew into a 
temper at me when I asked her if there’ d been 
any row between you and she, and told me to 
mind my own business. I didn’t care for that, 
but I did care to see her white as a piece of paper 
and crying one minute and laughing the next. 
And then I coaxed and petted her, and after a 
good spell of that kind o’ thing I got at the 
truth.” 

“The truth?” 

Moncrieffe started a little as these words left 
him. He had not dreamed of coming home, like 
this, with a conscience inwardly quailing and 
accusative. 

“Yes, Basil. It’s your going over to Green- 
dingle; that’s what’s the matter. She won’t 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


295 


stand it. You and I can call it cranky as much 
as we’re a mind ; but that ain’t going to stop it. 
And Basil ...” (from querulous the old man’s 
voice now became plaintive), 4 ‘we got to remem- 
ber how sick she is.” 

“Where is she now?” came Moncrieffe’s ques- 
tion. 

“In her own bedroom. She’s locked herself 
inside of it. I begged and begged her to let me 
in, but she’d only say ‘no, no, no;’ and then 
I’d hear her sobbing so’s it cut me to the heart. 
It always did keel me right over to hear her cry, 
even when she was the least little tot. But now! 
It makes me feel’s if some one was scalping me, 
and with a pretty dull knife at that. ’ ’ 

“I’ll go up and see what I can do,” said Mon- 
crieffe. “Perhaps she will not let me in, Mr. 
Blagdon, any more than she will let you.” 

But Elma answered his first summons. As 
she stood in the doorway he perceived that she 
had been weeping. 

“So you went, you went,” she began, sullenly. 
“You disobeyed me and went.” 

“I owe you no obedience, Elma,” he said. 
“I owe you kindness and courtesy and respect. 
These I am prepared to pay you, now and al- 
ways. I went, as you phrase it, and my going, 
either now or at any further time, is a matter 
wholly of my own choice.” 

“Your own choice!” rang her sudden violent 
cry. “It’s your own choice, then, to insult your 
wife — to make mockery of your marriage — to 
desert me for a woman you’d have proposed to 


296 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


if she hadn’t been poor and born out of wed- 
lock—” 

“Elma!” 

“I mean it; I mean every word of it. I hate 
you ! I hate myself that I was ever idiot enough 
to marry you!” She clenched one hand, and 
raised it. That she did not strike him on the 
face was no fault of her own. Moncrieffe caught 
by the wrist her lifted arm. In another moment 
she reeled backward, and fell totteringly on her 
knees, just saving herself from a ruinous contu- 
sion of the head by an abrupt sidelong swerve of 
her limber body. 

“Oh, Elma, Elma!” exclaimed Moncrieffe, 
bending over her, “this is horrible and disgrace- 
ful!” He strove to raise her, but with lightning 
change of mood she refused to rise. 

“No, no,” she wailed, in a transport of seem- 
ing repentance. “I told you that I hated you, 
and I tried to strike you. Let me kneel here 
and implore your pardon ! I lied when I said 
I hated you. I was a wretch, a devil, when I 
tried to strike 0 you. But oh, Basil, Basil, will 
you not promise me never to go there again?” 

He stooped down, with his eyes fixed unflinch- 
ingly on her face. “I will promise nothing of 
the sort, Elma,” he said. “Once and for all, 
understand this ! Once and for all — ” 

But then a sharp, desperate, shuddering cry 
broke from her. He saw her eyes close, her head 
reel, and slipped an arm about her waist just in 
time. 

She had swooned quite away when he raised 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


297 


her from the floor and carried her to the bed. 
Scarcely had he ]aid her there when Blagdon 
caught him by the sleeve. 

“God alive, man, do you want to kill my poor 
girl?” 

Basil turned to him, with a real burst of pas- 
sion, however brief. 

“Do I want to kill her? Can you ask me 
such a question after what you’ve seen me pass 
through with her? But since you do ask it, my 
answer is this : Your daughter, sir, too clearly 
wants to kill herself. ’ ’ 

Blagdon threw both hands tragically into the 
air. “All you got to do is to tell her you won’t 
go there any more. All you got to do, Basil, is 
just that !” 

Moncrieffe was bending over his wife, with 
two fingers at her pulse. “All I shall do,” he 
began, “is to maintain — ” 

There he paused. Whatever inflexible answer 
he may have been on the verge of making, now 
straightway died. He perceived that Elma was 
again in peril of her life. Awakening from her 
swoon, she began to beseech him, with semi-de- 
lirious tone and talk, that he would never will- 
ingly meet Eloise Thirl wall again. She at length 
tore from him a promise to this effect, and he 
was glad he had given it when he saw how its 
delivery lulled her ravings and tremors. All the 
rest of that day she was in the clutch of her for- 
mer foe, and toward nightfall he telegraphed for 
two renowned specialists. They did not arrive 
till noon of the next day. Elma was then in par- 


298 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


tial collapse. Their verdict was non-committal 
and yet gloomy. One of them prophesied an- 
other term of comparative health, provided this 
present dire attack subsided. The other was less 
hopeful ; he feared a long and distressing illness, 
ending perhaps fatally. 

When a week had passed, Moncrieffe realized 
that the second verdict had been the wiser. 
Elma now left her bed only during short inter- 
vals and by no means every day. For hours at 
a time she would be mild and tractable; then 
would come roughening storms that wrought 
horrid havoc with her former calm. Always, 
however, among the many virulent and vindict- 
ive things that she said to him, one belief stayed 
immutable. “You haven’t been to Greendingle, ” 
she would often murmur; “I’m sure you’ve kept 
your word. I believe in you that far.” And 
she did believe in him that far, and he realized 
it, and the realization made him regard with a 
kind of miserable loyalty the promise which she 
had dragged out of him in the pathos and pain 
of earlier illness. He settle^ into the groove of 
holding this promise more and more sacred as 
time lapsed ; and the unforgettable drama of his 
last meeting with Eloise served to clinch, as it 
were, his wavering fealty. After a while he 
wrote to Mrs. Thirlwall, telling her that his 
wife’s malady kept him almost incessantly beside 
her, and that the disease from which she suffered 
had so far unseated her mind as to cause her the 
severest anxiety if he were absent from her 
chamber more than half an hour at a time. This, 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


299 


as far as it went, was exactest truth. He chose 
not to explain, however, the real half maniacal 
dread which lay at the root of her anxiety. 

June ended with a fair degree of coolness, but 
July broke fiercely sultry upon the great, lovely 
valley. Miles of foliage stood from morning till 
night in breezeless apathy below the pearly 
hazes of heat. Some invalids even as weak as 
Elma might have preferred to be borne to the 
seashore or the mountains. But she shrank 
frowningly from all such change. “I couldn’t 
endure,” she insisted, “to be carried about on 
trains and steamboats, as if I were some highly 
frangible piece of luggage.” And once, when 
quite alone with her husband, she gave a sort of 
low snarl as she added: “Besides, you’d set me 
crazy with your stares at other women, just as 
you used to do in Paris.” 

Moncrieffe stifled an indignant sigh. She ir- 
ritated him, but she still kept his pity actively 
roused. There were times when he became weary 
to a desperate degree. As she grew weaker and 
needed more attendance she taxed his care and 
aid with augmenting demand. When a trained 
nurse appeared at her bedside she went into a 
paroxysm of reproach, and accused her husband 
of wishing to shirk his duties and relegate them 
to hired hands. In vain her father interfered. 
Blagdon was racked with anguish by her state, 
and at the same time filled with a growing ad- 
miration for the indefatigable patience of his 
son-in-law. Whatever resentment Moncrieffe 
had waked in him was now, to all appearance, 


300 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


vanquished and lulled. But Elma would have 
none of her father’s counsel, just as she would 
have none of his personal assistance. For sev- 
eral days she would not accept any medicine 
from the trained nurse, though at last this an- 
tipathy was partially overcome. Partially, that 
is, in the sense of being waited on by this woman 
only at certain hours during the day, and requir- 
ing her husband always to be in readiness dur- 
ing the night. Hence Moncrieffe would some- 
times pass nights of greatly broken rest, and 
was forced to take long sleeps while the sun 
shone. When July gave place to August it was 
still a torrid and exhausting sun. As a matter 
of course he lost both flesh and color, and began 
to look sadly haggard. 

Magnus Whitewright, thus far through the 
summer, had driven over to The Terraces and 
held short talks with him. It was during one 
of these talks that Whitewright at last fervently 
said: “Basil, if this keeps on, my boy, you’ll 
die before I do.” 

Moncrieffe laughed faintly. “My dear Mag- 
nus, that’s not at all an unpleasant prospect. 
You’ve so often prophesied an opposite course of 
affairs in my hearing that I’m tempted to hail 
this announcement with a kind of funereal 
hilarity.” 

“Joking aside, Basil — ” 

“But you forget ; you never leave joking aside 
if it’s a question of when and where and how 
soon you will die. Your mortuary jokes would 
make a White wright-ana of many pages. So 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


301 


please permit me to have my own modest fling 
in the same dark direction.” 

“Oh, very well;, you may rouge the cheeks of 
pallida mors , if you please, and dress him in 
striped hose and rosetted shoes, for all I care. . . ” 

“There you are again, my friend.” 

“But, Basil, you haven’t got your walking- 
ticket out of the world, as I have. For all my 
vaunted indifference about going, do you sup- 
pose I wouldn’t stay here if I could? You can 
stay here — if you want; and now you’re letting 
slow suicide dig a grave for you.” 

“Letting ,” smiled Moncrieffe, with tired 
irony. “You might as well blame a cripple for 
not starting off on a run. I’ve told you what a 
captive I am.” He rose, with a loud sigh, and 
went toward one of the library windows. While 
standing there he added dismally: “Ho danger 
of my dying, though, unless it’s from ennui.” 

The room was dusky, book-lined, and majestic 
with heavy carvings of oak. Its architect had 
copied it from some library in one of the famed 
English houses, and perhaps the tasteful caprice 
of Elma herself had decreed that just beyond its 
broad mullioned windows of illumined glass 
should stretch a garden full of holly-hocks and 
petunias and phlox and other radiant midsummer 
flowers. As Moncrieffe made the afternoon light 
drift more amply across the polished oaken floors, 
nothing could have been more enchanting than 
the brilliant contrast of these luxurious and neat- 
tended flower-beds with the somber medisevalism 
of the low-ceiled room itself. “How hot it is,” 


302 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


he murmured, standing within the alcove of the 
window; “how insufferably hot!” 

As he spoke, the mellow bassos of bees came 
floating across the stagnant air. Every spire of 
the hollyhocks had lost its native keenness, 
glimmering vague beneath gray, fur-like sky. 
A humming-bird poised above the low, massed 
trumpet-blooms of the petunias, and the live- 
coal scarlet on its tiny throat seemed a tropic 
condensation of the savage heat. 

“I find this weather more of a help than a 
harm,” said Whitewright. “Not that it gives 
me strength, but rather that it lets me feel as if 
what strength remains to me were not slowly 
and subtly ebbing away.” 

“I shall think the better of it, then, from to- 
day henceforth, Magnus. And I suppose we 
may expect it all through the rest of August.” 

“To you it’s a deadly nuisance, I perceive.” 

Moncrieffe gave his head a despairing toss. 
“Oh, in the circumstances, yes. Ordinarily I 
shouldn’t mind it.” He left the window, reap- 
proaching his friend. “The truth is, I’m pass- 
ing through a fiery furnace, in much more than 
a merely meteorological sense. And the end is 
not yet, nor may it come for many months.” 
He laid one hand on the back of Whitewright’s 
chair. “Magnus, I have such ghastly thoughts, 
nowand then.” he went on, with voice almost 
lowered to a whisper. 

“I can guess them. You want the end to 
happen soon, and you want it to be an end of a 
certain sort.” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


303 


4 4 Hush — not so loud !” 

44 You want it not to be recovery but death.” 

Moncrieffe stooped down and spoke with an 
eagerness wild and wistful. “Of what use would 
recovery be to her? In a little while this devil- 
ish disease would return. She refuses, now, to 
see any other physician but myself. Would to 
God I could prevail upon her to let others visit 
her bedside! It would be futile, but it would 
take from me a wretched onus!” 

“And she’s obstinate there?” 

Moncrieffe laughed softly, with sorrow and 
sarcasm interblended. “Obstinate there! My 
God, Magnus, to be, as I am, her slave, her 
scullion, her factotum, her drudge, her watch- 
dog, her worst enemy and her one clung-to friend, 
her aversion and abomination this minute and 
her idol and ideal the next — ah, you can’t con- 
ceive how it tries and racks!” 

4 4 Can’t I?” The words were simple, but 
Moncrieffe felt them lay strong and swift balm 
on his hurt heart, so pregnantly did they teem 
with sympathy, pity and love. 

He stooped again, and touched Whitewright’s 
pale brow fleetingly with his lips. “God bless 
you, Magnus! You do feel for me!” 

4 4 Feel for you? Basil, Basil, I never dreamed 
of this!” 

Moncrieffe took once more the chair he had 
quitted. 4 4 Magnus, even now she’s whimpering 
to the nurse (whom she detests and bullies and 
insults) about my absence from the room. Her 
father knows you’re here, and I asked him to 


304 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


wait at the door and assure her that~I was still 
talking with you, if she should begin to cry out 
suspicious and scandalous things born of a jeal- 
ousy that it taxes even charity to term insane. 
But her father will be treated like an impudent 
lackey, and will bear it with the most servile 
meekness. As for myself, when I go back there 
I shall have my choice between two issues: 
either I must plunge myself into an open quarrel 
with her and feel that I am a brute and coward 
to hold any contest whatever with a sick and 
death-threatened woman, or I must accept from 
her a renewal of tyranny whose whimsical de- 
tails I should be ashamed to specify/’ 

Whitewright seemed to meditate. Then he 
said, with a sort of measured impetuosity: “I’d 
throw over the whole shocking burden of it. I’d 
risk people’s chatter, or, rather, I’d show it blank 
unconcern. It isn’t as if she were not girt by 
all conceivable comfort and ease. Come back 
and live with me at the little cottage. Save 
yourself in time.” 

Moncrieffe signed with his head a slow nega- 
tive. “I can’t do that. It might be self-pres- 
ervation, but it would constantly taunt me as 
unmanliness. After all, I took her ‘for better 
or worse.’ No. As for peril to my health, I’m 
tough; I’ll survive. It isn’t that.” 

“What is it, then?” sharply asked his friend. 

“Can’t you think? Can’t you guess? I’m 
there with her for hours when nobody else is 
near. She sends the nurse away; she won’t 
have her anywhere about ; she won’t have her 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


305 


father anywhere about. And then, poor thing, 
she prays me for something that I dare not give 
her. She willfully prays for it, I think, because I 
was once fool enough to tell her that it would 
bring relief at first and then cause greater misery 
afterward.” 

“Morphine?” 

“Yes — what else?” 

“Good God !” sai^ ^ right, rising ; “you 

can’t mean that you — ?” 

“Sit down, Magnus, and don’t stupidly excite 
yourself this torrid day.” And Moncrieffe 
pushed him back into his chair again. “Look 
here, now. It’s like this with me: I might dis- 
creetly use the drug upon her, and for a long 
time aid her in marked degree. If she were to 
live only three or four months, let us say, there 
would really be an exquisite mercy in using it. 
But the lingering quality of her illness, and the 
chance of nature giving her future respites of 
comparative health, would create the risk of her 
becoming morbidly fond of it, and that she had 
become so would weigh heavily on my con- 
science.” 

“Your conscience, Basil?” 

‘ ‘Having the stuff always within arm's 
reach , like that, might tempt me terribly.” 

“Tempt you terribly! Man, what are you 
saying? In what way could it tempt you ter- 
ribly? Not in the way, surely, of giving her 
more . . more than teas right f” 

Moncrieffe answered with a quick, bleak laugh. 

‘ ‘ No. Of giving myself more than was right !” 


306 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


XXIII. 

Magnus never believed that answer, and for 
days he was troubled by a thought of some 
ill happening to his friend worse than even 
self-destruction. It seemed to him that Mon- 
crieffe had intended to say a certain hideous 
thing, and then had preferred to leave it un- 
spoken — to substitute for it a thing not quite 
so hideous. Whitewright, recalling the con- 
fessed misery of the man, could realize that 
he might have listened to a voice of awful 
temptation. But that he should have yielded 
to its incriminating counsels — “No, no,” he 
kept telling himself, “a million times, no!” 
And yet, as his quiet life lapsed on, he could 
never receive into his mind the image of Basil 
Moncrieffe without surrounding it by an atmos- 
phere of anxiety and jeopardy. 

He had either felt, or fancied that he felt, the 
abnormal heat of the weather helpful to his 
shattered lungs. Toward the middle of August, 
when cooler days came, he found his strength 
again failing him. Except for the new pertur- 
bation roused by his friend, he would have 
accepted this omen with complete indifference. 
His philosophy never for an instant failed him, 
pagan and heartless though some critics might 
have called it. He was not merely willing to 
die; he looked upon any unwillingness to die 
as the absurdest little spasm of contention — as 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


307 


if a leaf should argue with its twig when the 
time came for it to fall earthward. 

Often he wished that Mrs. Thirlwall would 
drift into the drug-shop again — or, if not she, 
Eloise. But neither came. Fearing that one of 
them might visit the place while he was absent, 
he left strict orders with his clerk to inform him 
of their possible appearance. But instead of hear- 
ing any news of this sort, he learned, one after- 
noon, that Eloise had lately been seen to alight 
from a wagon and enter the doorway of the 
neighboring druggist. “An intentional avoid- 
ance,” mused Whitewright. “She and her aunt 
are no doubt affronted at Basil’s behavior to them, 
and knowing how intimate he and I still are, they 
both wish to shirk all discussion of his believed 
slight.” 

Here he erred, however; for though it was 
true that Eloise had not wished to meet the 
friend of Basil Moncrieffe, her motives were far 
from those of pique. As for Mrs. Thirlwall, 
she rarely drove abroad at all, nowadays, and it 
presently reached the ears of Whitewright, 
through channels of inevitable River view gos- 
sip, that she was forced to spend much of her 
time in a reclining posture. 

September found Moncrieffe’s immurement 
quite unchanged. It might be said of him, 
indeed, that he was a prisoner whose man- 
acles had been made weightier and fastened 
with stolider rivets. 

“You are always wanting other physicians to 
come and see her,” he said one day to his father- 


308 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


in-law. “Be it, then, as you wish. I prom- 
ise, as I need not tell you, to receive them with 
all possible courtesy. But how will Elma be- 
have? Unless I am greatly mistaken she will 
cover her head with the bedclothes and tell them, 
through folds of linen and eider-down, to go 
away and cease annoying her. She may prob- 
ably add,” he went on, with dreamy dreariness, 
“that I understand her case better than any 
other doctor in the world could, and that she 
has the most implicit faith in my abilities. 
Afterward, however, I shall no doubt pay the 
penalty of this public compliment by having her 
tell me privately that I disgrace the profession 
I’ve presumed to practice. Still, make the trial, 
if you choose.” 

Blagdon heaved a big sigh. He seemed to 
have grown a decade older in the last six weeks. 
“I guess we better make the trial,” he said. 
“P’aps she won’t carry on half as bad as you 
expect.” 

Two new specialists came up from town, and 
their verdict (which Moncrieffe pronounced 
rather safely non-committal) does not concern 
the present chronicle. But to his amazement 
Elma proved him, in this case, the falsest of 
prophets. Her treatment of the physicians 
could scarcely have been civiller. When they 
were* gone, however, the tempest of her con- 
tumacy broke. The coming of these men had 
been a persecution; her nerves were now in the 
wildest tumult. Why had Basil permitted this 
abominable thing? He knew that she had been 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


309 


willing to put up with his treatment, second- 
rate doctor though she had often called and 
thought him. The reason of this was her de- 
sire to be rid of wiseacres, wagging their con- 
ceited heads over her poor, wasted body. The 
disease from which she suffered was more men- 
tal than physical. She had made a fearful mis- 
take in believing that any happiness could come 
of her marriage. The first week of their honey- 
moon had taught her what a wild fool she had 
behaved like. The more he had pretended to 
love her the distincter his hypocrisy had shone 
out. She granted that she had played, from 
the first, an unfeminine, an unwomanly part. 
But he, as a man, could have taken a manly 
stand. He could have snubbed her off her 
feet the second time they met, there at the 
Cassilis dinner. But he had been quite the 
opposite of repelling — oh, indeed, yes! He 
had led her on to deport herself like a lovesick 
Amazon. And she was lovesick; she admitted 
it. But that evening, here at The Terraces, 
he might have put her at arm’s length and 
held her there. He had never loved her as 
she wanted to beloved — in the finer, fuller, over- 
mastering way. He knew that he hadn’t, and 
being a man, with strength of every sort wholly 
beyond her own, he should have let her see this. 
It was his duty to have recognized the real nat- 
ure of her longing, and to have repulsed it merci- 
fully rather than to have given it a hope which 
must end soon afterward in racking disappoint- 
ment. But he’d ignored his duty; he’d let him- 


310 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


self yield when it was cowardly to yield. Yes, 
cowardly! He needn’t stare at her with that 
old maddeningly pitying look. If he pitied her 
so much now he might have pitied her a little 
then — at the time when his pity would have had 
practical, healing results. If she had been a poor 
girl and had acted with that same rash folly, he 
would have known just how to deal with her. 
She’d have got no clemency, no complaisance 
then. She’d have got a mild lecture and been 
politely sent about her business. As if she 
hadn’t brooded over it all a thousand times! 
As if she hadn’t looked it full in the face and 
been turned to stone by the Gorgon it was! 

Through the latter part of this tirade Mon- 
crieffe had gone to a window near the bed 
whence it was delivered, and leaned one arm 
on a small table that held two or three books 
and several glasses of medicine. It was a sil- 
very September afternoon. The unseen sun 
was westering like a mighty veiled diamond in 
a sky over- filmed by pale- blue mist. There was 
just a bending glimpse of the steely river be- 
yond great clusters of tremulous tree- tops, whose 
dusky yet scintillant green stayed untouched by 
the faintest autumnal ravage. The invalid’s 
rasping and malapert tones had for him a kind 
of insulting effect upon the lovely landscape at 
which he gazed, and seemed to parody in saucy 
mockery the thin, sweet, pleading trebles of the 
crickets, beginning even before sunfall their 
delicate chant which autumn darkness and star- 
shine and dew would soon resonantly louden. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


311 


He rose and went to her bedside. The late, 
whitish light smote her bony face with merci- 
less violence of volume. She had closed her 
eyes, and breathed somewhat exhaustedly. Per- 
haps familiarity deadened Moncrieffe’s pity as 
he looked on her wrecked haggardness. Often 
she had stirred his resentment, of late, and 
often he had repressed its fretful outplay. He 
knew that he would use such control now; 
and yet so cruelly had she just turned the old 
knife in the old wound that he felt some sort 
of resistant disclaimer would not ill consort 
with even the stern law of patience that he 
had laid down for himself. 

“Elma,” he said, very softly. She opened 
her eyes and stared up at him. The eyes 
gleamed immense from her cadaverous face. 

“Oh, you’ve found your tongue, Basil, at 
last!” 

“Only to tell you this, Elma: If I had been 
false to you in the grossest fashion — if I had 
flaunted a mistress before you instead of show- 
ing you my fullest fidelity and respect, you 
might with reason assail me like this.” 

She closed her eyes again, and he moved away. 
But suddenly he heard her cry from the bed: 

“Oh, you’ve been perfect! Throw that in my 
face — your exquisite perfection! I know why 
you do it — to try and make me more miserable 
than I am, lying here stricken and prostrated.” 
He came hurrying back to the bed, and reached 
out a hand to stroke her hair and temples ; but 
she caught the hand and flung it away with 


312 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


spiteful vigor. “A mistress !” she almost 
shouted. “I wish you had had one! Any- 
thing would have been better than the neat, 
respectable, self-cautious lie you’ve masked 
under!” 

“Elma! Elma!” 

Soon afterward she was seized with one of her 
worst spells of pain. It lasted until dark had 
set in, and needed the urgent offices of both her 
husband and the nurse. During its continuance 
she became slightly delirious, and embarrassed 
Moncrieffe before the nurse by clasping one of 
his hands in both her own (so burningly hot, so 
fibrously thin!) and imploring him to pardon 
her for the late lawless words that she had 
hurled at him. When her suffering grew most 
keen, she began to beg him once again for that 
drug which he dreaded to let her taste. He 
gave her another, of similar effect, and felt re- 
lieved by the pacific results it wrought. She 
was sleeping by seven o’clock, when be went to 
his own apartments, utterly despondent in spirit. 

“It is just as I knew it would be,” he brooded. 
“These new-comers merely excite her by their 
presence. Hereafter if outside advice is to be 
given I will receive it, describing her condition, 
but refusing all admittance to her bed-chamber. 

. . . And as for morphine, I’m tempted to be- 
gin it with her. The end seems near, now. 
Both those doctors, after seeing her and hear- 
ing all I had to say, gave her at the most 
scarcely a month longer to live. What con- 
ceivable harm could morphine do? Many an- 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


313 


other man in my place would have used it long 
ago. . . This evening, after dinner, if she still 
sleeps on under the effects of that potion, I’ll 
steal away to Magnus, have a talk with him, 
and get from him a certain prescription. By 
all means that will be the sanest and wisest 
course.” 

As he thus reflected, Moncrieffe had com- 
pletely forgotten his odd and dubious state- 
ments to White wright a few weeks before. 
They were born of a nervous, hysteric depres- 
sion, and all thought of them had now passed 
away. He had no more wish or will to dimin- 
ish by one second the existence of his unhappy 
wife than he had wish or will to cut his right 
hand from its wrist. 

On reaching his own apartments he drew a 
long, relieved breath, There was still a little 
while before the hour for dinner — that cheerless 
dinner at which he and Blagdon would face 
each other in the great dining-room, both trying 
to seem as if the air they breathed were not 
leaden. On the large open desk in his dressing- 
room Moncrieffe found some cards and letters. 
Blagdon saw no visitors, nowadays, passing his 
time either in moody walks about the grounds 
or in piteous eavesdroppings at the door of his 
child’s sick-room. The mournful social wave of 
condolence at Elma’s affliction broke here, as it 
were, on Moncrieffe’s private desk. He had 
only to repair thither at the end of each day in 
order to see just who had called, who had sent 
messages of sympathy, who had written letters 


314 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


formal or spontaneous. This evening he found 
one of many which Mrs. Thirlwall had written. 
He read it almost with tears; for, in parts, it 
answered so feelingly and with what might be 
termed so encircling an atmospheric warmth, 
his own doleful apologies for having forsaken 
Greend ingle. “My poor boy,” a part of it ran, 
“I shall really be worse if you worry about my 
becoming so. The medicine you insisted on 
having conveyed to me will aid me far more 
if I soon learn from you that you have stoutly 
revolted against having my health and general 
welfare any longer on your conscience. I am 
sure you are well aware that in a relatively 
brief lapse of time you have made me peculiarly 
fond of you : hence I shall suffer with your suf- 
ferings, languish with your captivity, if you 
cannot write me happier news at an early date. 
And Eloise joins me in the longing that happier 
news will soon reach us both.” 

He read over that last sentence twenty times 
without knowing it. “Dear girl,” he said to 
himself, “she has kept my insolent outburst a 
secret. God bless her for showing me that re- 
spect when I deserved it so ill!” 

On another page of the letter he found: “Our 
home is much more peaceful than formerly. 
Dunstan has ceased to vex and sting me with 
regard to a sale of the estate. Perhaps this 
attitude may be explained by the news that 
before long we shall receive a handsome offer 
for a great slice of it from that Railway Com- 
pany which has kept shrouding its real purport 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


315 


in so many evasions and procrastinations. But 
oh, I can never reconcile myself to the thought 
of that old, memory -haunted graveyard being 
partially torn up! Thank Heaven my hus- 
band’s grave and those of his kindred are safe 
from spoliation! There is to me such ruthless 
barbarism in any desecrating course like this! 
The very helplessness of the dead should clothe 
them with inviolable sanctity! I should suffer 
beyond words if our plot were not so situated 
as to be quite beyond the reach of the ma- 
rauders. . . Whatever has really caused this 
change in Dunstan, I accept it with untold 
gratitude. Will you believe me when I tell 
you that he has not scowled at any of poor 
little Anita’s prattle for over a week, and that 
last evening, on returning unexpectedly from 
one of his trips to town, he honored Eloise 
with a bow (not a nod, but an actual, full- 
fledged bow) when they chanced to meet in 
the lower hall, and dizzied her with consterna- 
tion by remarking that it had been a beautiful 
day?” 

“The incalculable cad!” Moncrieffe mentally 
groaned. . . Still elsewhere in the fascinating 
letter he read — 

“I sometimes tell myself that I think more of 
death, nowadays, than ever before, and always 
in a vein by no means morbid. Do you remem- 
ber our conversation on that evening when we 
first met — the evening when a poor, unnerved 
old woman fell genuinely in love with you? I 
then babbled most unbecomingly,, and talked of 


316 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


alterations in my spiritual moods and creeds 
with as much airy levity as though they had 
been the latest phases in bonnets and gowns. 
I was restive, unappeasable, then. I had lost 
the power to believe, and unbelief was only an 
intellectual elixir, giving no stimulus at all to 
my moral nature. But now all that is changed ; 
the dissatisfaction, the revolt, the longing to 
envisage destiny with reprimand, and challenge 
her to give reasons and excuses — each has re- 
freshingly vanished. Not that I am in the 
least cut, in my present mental configuration, 
after the' pattern of your friend, Whitewright. 
Both of us have apparently found peace, but in 
ways that are widely different. He has found 
it (as certain eloquent and original sentences of 
his made clear to me when I visited him during 
his illness) in a conviction of his own complete 
individual unimportance. I have found it in 
feeling myself doomed to annihilation among 
the very best of company. Magnus White- 
wright spoke truly when he said to me that 
there is nothing actually less marvelous in 
the lungs of a gnat than in the brain of a 
Shakespeare. So, I feel, there is nothing 
more or less natural in my own bodily de- 
cadence than in the wilting of a rose, the 
plashing of a sea-wave, the fading of a sun- 
set. Have you ever gone to bed tired and 
wanting to sleep, yet been beset with a curious 
dread of that smothering and annulling thrall 
which slumber would exert upon you? That 
was my state. Now I often feel like one who 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


317 


will lay upon his pillow, when the appointed 
hour comes, a head both weary and willing. 
In other words, that terrible sense of lapsing 
into eternal blankness has graciously with- 
drawn. And then there is always hope, that 
flower of such superb hardihood that it can feed 
on air like an orchid with the dear dissimular- 
ity of never being a parasite. And how death- 
less hope is, yet often how delicate ! It is like 
the choicest of lilies, like the commonest of 
weeds! One minute we seem to see in it the 
rarity of an exotic, another minute it wears the 
wilding ubiquity of grass. . . What, I some- 
times ask myself, if that were God, that only? 
Everybody has it; it is so cheap and yet so 
precious! How many thousands has it saved 
from madness ! I knew an atheist once, in my 
earlier days, when I was devoutly religious. I 
thought him a horrid wretch, merely because he 
did not believe. He said the most scorchingly 
cynical things, or so they seemed to me then. 
But now, in remembering them, I perceive that 
they were tinged with hope. Nothing can argue 
it away; it creeps between the crevices of every 
syllogism. When I am weak, and have to lie 
down, yet still am hopeful, I feel its influence 
as never before. I begin to think that in some 
form or another it never dies till we die our- 
selves. Then, perhaps, it becomes — realization ! 
Ah, that tantalizing will-o’-the-wisp, Perhaps!” 

There were other notes and letters, one or two 
of them most kindly and humane, from people 
like Mrs. Cassilis, Mrs. Bedchambers, or that 


318 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


Miss Bertha Dilloway, of whose aphasiac father 
Elina herself had not long ago made such un- 
scrupulous fun. But nothing gave him a shadow 
of the comfort which he had drawn from Mrs. 
ThirlwalPs impetuous yet thoughtful pages. 
This lightened the heavy dreariness of his 
dinner with Blagdon, who talked solely of his 
ill-fated child, and was sublimely forgetful that 
she had forbidden him from entering her room 
since the previous afternoon, when he had 
thrown her into a pettish outburst by the 
crackling of a newspaper tucked unconsci- 
ously under his arm. 

After dinner Monerieffe went upstairs again, 
and found that Elma still tranquilly slept. He 
gave certain orders to the nurse, and then passed 
down through the great, still house. As he 
quitted it and went toward the stables he felt 
like a prisoner escaping from durance. Such, in 
a certain sense, he indeed was, and he made his 
exit stealthily through fear that his father-in- 
law might hear it and come forth and ask him 
in astonishment if he were really going to leave 
his charge for any length of time. At the sta- 
bles he got a horse harnessed in rather quick 
time, and was soon on his way to the village, 
hoping that he would find Whitewright in his 
shop. He took a dog-cart, and drove himself, 
with a man behind him. The stars burned large 
and yet rayless in the sweet, mild gloom. It 
was good to be out like this, with the smell of 
leaves and grasses in one’s nostrils. He rel- 
ished his freedom keenly. Days had passed 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


319 


since any such charm of change had befallen 
him. The cries of the crickets and katydids 
burdened the soft dark with their melancholy 
monotones. He seemed to hear in them a la- 
ment for his own shattered happiness. And 
then certain words of Mrs. Thirlwall’s letter 
came echoing through his spirit. How truly 
had she written of the imperishability of hope! 
But on a sudden he felt himself quietly thrill. 
Did not hope mean for him, after all, a selfish 
desire that some one should die? How horrible 
to have that desire, no matter what strain and 
wrench of persecution, of weariness, of despera- 
tion might have engendered it! And yet its 
darkness knitted itself into the darkness of the 
night; its yearning inward cry became the cry 
of the myriad insect voices around him; its ir- 
repressible glow was visibly duplicated in the 
lights of remote planets and suns, crowding 
the infinite arch above him with their tender 
brilliance and divine mystery. 

Whitewright stood prosaically behind the 
counter as Moncrieffe entered his shop. The 
place was empty of customers, and both clerks 
were away. 

‘‘Basil! I’m so glad to see you !” 

“And I’m tremendously glad to get out of jail 
for an hour or so.” 

“You don’t mean — ?” 

“I’m an incarnate escape, dear boy! You 
don’t know what I’m going through!” 

“Tell me — tell me.” 

They talked together for perhaps five minutes, 


320 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


leaning on different sides of the counter and 
looking into one another’s eyes. 

“Horrible!” at length said White wright. 
“No wonder you look fagged out.” 

“Do I look that way?” Moncrieffe replied. “I 
can stand fatigue, Magnus ; I’ve a fund of real 
health to draw upon. But you, my friend. . .” 

Whitewright drew back a little, with a soft 
laugh. “Now you’re paying me back in my 
own coin, Basil.” 

“No, no. But there’s a change in you.” 

“Well— there ought to be. I had a slight 
hemorrhage yesterday.” 

“Magnus!” 

“I’ve felt a good deal better all to-day. But 
I haven’t been here at all till about two hours 
ago. It’s Thomas’s day off, and I let Henry 
have the evening to himself till closing-time — 
ten o’clock or thereabouts.” 

“Oh, my dear Magnus, you shouldn’t have 
come here ! You should have stayed at home 
to-day, and you should have sent for me yester- 
day as soon as your attack occurred!” 

“Sent for you? As if you were not busy 
enough without the bother of any summons from 
me!” 

“Such a summons could never find me busy — 
you know it!” 

“And yet you’ve just told me — ” 

“That she is imperative, irrational, unman- 
ageable ! But that would not have kept me from 
hastening to you if I had received three words — 
two — one!” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


321 


“Bah, my dear friend!” smiled White wright, 
with his pale lips. “I’m fairly well now. I 
rested through the day. So, there, let us talk 
of more cheerful things.” 

“Of myself, for instance,” broke sardonically 
from Moncrieffe. “Of my poor, shattered wife 
— of her dazed, agonized father!” 

“Things are forlorn with you, truly! I sup- 
pose you’ve still some consolation in reading?” 

“Oh, yes; I read omnivorously. There’s the 
library, you know, stocked by Elma herself with 
many good books. Classics mostly, you know. 
But how one goes back to the classics for real 
distraction and absorption, after all ! And that 
reminds me, dear Magnus. I was so glad to get 
the package of novels you sent.” 

“Your note told me so.” 

“I should have made it longer, but every day 
I was in hopes of dropping over to see you. It 
pleased me to find five or six good American 
novels. We’re doing so much better work in 
fiction nowadays than the English.” 

“Do you think so?” retorted White wright, 
with a touch of his old argumentative belliger- 
ence. And then he pleased his friend by show- 
ing him that he was well enough to scold him 
for liking some of the careful Franco- American 
realists, naturalists and analysts better than cer- 
tain modern English romanticists, with their 
pictorial and prismatic treatment of life. But 
suddenly he stopped short. “You’re not listen- 
ing, Basil,” he affirmed. 

“Oh, yes. You were saying. . . But, really, 


322 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


Magnus, I’m afraid to stay much longer. If she 
wakes and finds me absent there’s no telling the 
dire results that may follow.” 

“Dire?” 

“Oh, well, after what I’ve told you, form 
your own conclusions ... I have formed mine 
on a certain point. I’m going to let her have 
morphine.” 

“Oh, you are?” 

“Yes. It’s absurd not to give her that one 
precious relief now.” 

Whitewright was staring downward at his 
counter as he said: “You mean subcutaneous 
injections?” 

“Yes. She prayed for relief of that sort yes- 
terday, in one of her fits of pain. I spoke of the 
matter to those doctors this morning.” 

“Oh, you did, you did?” White wright’s eyes 
were lifted, peeringly, below gathered and wor- 
ried brows. 

“How queerly you speak, Magnus!” 

“Do I? Well . . .” 

He paused, and Moncrieffe grasped his arm. 
“What’s the matter? . . I’d forgotten the trash 
I rattled off that hot day when we talked to- 
gether at The Terraces. But something in 
your look makes me remember it now. . . In 
Heaven’s name, Magnus, I hope you don’t hold 
me accountable for it?” 

“Do I seem as if I held you accountable for 
it?” replied Whitewright, with a thin, vague 
little laugh. 

“Upon my soul you did seem so — or I thought 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


323 


you did.” Here Moncrieffe sighed loudly. 
“Some fancy of mine, perhaps, born of fatigue. . . 
I want the morphine, however. Make it up for 
me at once, please.” He then spoke as one phy- 
sician to another, explaining just the amount 
and quality of the desired preparation.- 

As he ended, White wright gave a quick cough 
and put a hand to the region of his heart. His 
face, usually pale, had in an instant grown 
ashen. Moncrieffe darted behind the counter 
and grasped his shoulders. 

“Magnus! You’re ill again?” 

“No, no.” And then White wright drew a 
long breath, which ended in a smile. “There! 
You see?, I’m all right again. It was nothing. ” 

“Nothing? Are you sure?” 

“Quite sure.” 

“You look better than you did a minute or 
two ago. . . Magnus!” 

“Yes?” 

“Let me drive you straight home, after you’ve 
got me that preparation.” 

“That preparation — yes.” 

“Do you feel well enough to make it for me?” 

“Oh, yes. I’ll . . I’ll make it at once. Wait 
here, Basil. By the way, my clerk, Henry, may 
come in at any moment, now. You’ll receive 
him if he does come, will you not, and tell him 
I’m busy off yonder?” 

“Yes.” 

White wright disappeared, and he had scarcely 
done so when the expected clerk arrived. He 
was a young man, with an intelligent face, and 


324 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


seemingly not much past twenty years. In a 
semi-whisper Moncrieffe addressed him. 

‘‘You are Henry, the clerk, are you not?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Well, Henry, Mr. Whitewright isn’t well 
enough to stay here this evening. He’s making 
up a prescription for me, and when he’s through 
with it I want to drive him right home. You 
understand?” 

“Oh, indeed I do, sir! Mr. Whitewright 
oughtn’t to have come out this afternoon. I 
told him everything would be all right here. 
He’s very sick, sir; he’s a good deal sicker than 
he’s willing to give in.” 

“True enough.” 

At the same moment Whitewright stood in 
the rear of the shop, quite concealed from view. 
In a little while he began to busy himself with 
certain chemicals. But a great fear was at his 
heart, and this fear filtered through his lips in 
vagrant murmurs. 

“Am I sure of him? That word ‘tempta- 
tion.’ . . . Not that he spoke it to-night. . . But 
if, when I gave him the drug, he should be 
tempted. . . Have I the right to give it him? . . . 
Suppose I went out there again and told him 
frankly I’ve not the right. . .” 

But at length the vial was made up, and he 
brought it forth to Moncrieffe. “Thanks,” the 
latter said, placing it in his pocket. “And now, 
Magnus, you are going to let me take you di- 
rectly home. I’ll drop you at your door. Ann’s 
there still — faithful old Ann?” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


325 


“Yes.” 

“Tell her I say you mustn’t get up to-morrow 
till — Magnus! Magnus!” 

White wright had dropped into a chair, and 
his head had fallen backward. It was a swoon 
of utter exhaustion. An hour passed before he 
had recovered sufficiently from it to be borne by 
Moncrieffe and Henry into the carriage. 

Ann received them frightenedly when they 
reached the cottage. But she rallied soon, like 
the capable and sturdy old creature that she was. 

“I’ll take good care of him, never fear, sir,” 
she said, when Whitewright had been got under 
the bedclothes, drowsy, faint, almost speechless. 

“Don’t let him leave his bed all day to-mor- 
row, Ann,” enjoined Moncrieffe, just before his 
departure. 

“No, sir. I’ll do my best not to. But I guess 
he’ll be too weak, anyway.” 

“I’m afraid he will, Ann — I’m afraid he 
will. . . And to-morrow afternoon, or before 
that time, I’ll try to drive over again.” 

“Very well, sir.” 

And with a heavy heart Moncrieffe left the 
still form on the bed, going softly downstairs 
and re-entering his carriage. . . 

Two hours later Magnus Whitewright woke 
from his lethargy. The old servant had left 
him, feeling sure that he would not need her 
through the rest of the night. He woke with 
great suddenness. A shaded lamp burned on a 
table not far from his bed. He rose, and soon 
partially dressed himself, putting his feet into 


326 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


slippers and wrapping his form in a loose woolen 
gown. This cost him great effort, and now 
and then he was forced to pause, panting from 
exhaustion. At length he seated himself at his 
writing-desk and began a letter, which he wrote 
slowly and with characters insecure. This letter 
he sealed, and addressed it to Moncrieffe ; then he 
put it in a larger envelope, addressing that also 
to Moncrieffe. Afterward he wrote a short note 
to his friend, which ran thus: “Herein you will 
find a letter which I earnestly beg that you will 
not open till three months have elapsed from the 
time at which you read these lines. This may 
sound mysterious to you, yet for the sake of our 
old friendship bear with me and grant my re- 
quest. If I am alive by then you can come and 
scold me and storm at me all you please. If I 
am dead, think leniently of my measure, and 
remember that its motive has been rooted in 
devout affection. ” 

He placed this note, merely folded, in the 
large envelope, which he also sealed. He left 
the one rather bulky missive on his desk, and 
disrobed himself for bed. Just before he again 
lay down he looked at himself with fixity in the 
glass above his bureau. He saw that his pallor 
had become intense. 

He felt no pain, nor any nervous distress. But 
his bodily weakness and weariness were acute. 
As he drew the coverlid about him he told him- 
self that he was glad he had written those two 
letters, for there was strong chance that he 
might not be well enough to leave in a good 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


327 


while the bed he had just entered. “I was fool- 
ish,” he mused, “to go out at all to-day.” Then 
a drowsiness overcame him, and he slept for per- 
haps an hour. When his eyes unclosed upon the 
plainness of the little bedroom, he seemed to be 
looking at everything through a grayish haze. 

“Is it death?” he thought. He had not the 
least qualm of fear. “How commonplace it 
seems to die, when one thinks of the billions and 
billions that have set this fashion for us from 
remotest centuries down to the present minute ! 
I always told myself that I would not be afraid 
when it came. I dreaded physical suffering, 
though — who doesn’t? And I’m so lucky to pass 
away like this. But I would have liked to know 
it was coming so quickly, because of bidding 
good-by to dear old Basil.” Then his instinctive, 
indestructible sense of humor caused him to 
laugh aloud in the still, dim room. “What if I 
were making a blunder, a serio-comic blunder, 
and should fall asleep again, and wake up a lit- 
tle better, and go back to the shop again, and 
portion out pills and cough mixtures all through 
the winter, and to go five or six funerals of old 
Riverview acquaintances, and feel pretty bad in 
the ensuing spring, and grow rather better again 
to ward June, and almost hear people say of me 
that I had one foot in the grave, wondering why 
the other one didn’t follow it and get there as 
well, so as to relieve me of such a ridiculous 
chronic straddle and limp? How funny that 
would be, and what a verification of the old 
proverb about threatened men! . . . How ab- 


328 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


surdly funny, and how I’d poke jokes at myself 
afterward, and ...” 

He fell asleep with a laugh on his lips, and 
literally died with a smile on them. Old Ann 
came in at dawn, and saw the smile, and shrieked 
as she saw it, so frozen it looked and so unalter- 
able. 

But to any one who had known the man well 
in life that smile would have been a study infin- 
itely subtle. It was so serene, so defiant, so sar- 
castic, so humorous and yet so human. 


XXIY. 

White wright s death was a fearful shock to 
Moncrieffe. On coming over to the cottage he 
found the big envelope bearing his name, read 
the loose note inside of it, glanced at the other 
smaller envelope, thrust this into his pocket with 
hardly even a slight thrill of curiosity, and reab- 
sorbed himself in the grief which almost smother- 
ingly clouded his soul. 

To his surprise, that night, he had found Elma 
so much quieter and better on his return to her 
bedside, that he placed under lock and key the 
drug he had procured in the village. She was 
wide awake when he entered the room. She 
asked him where he had been, though not with 
any tinge of irritation in her tones. He told her 
quite unreservedly, except as regarded the swoon 
of poor Whitewright, and she answered that she 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


329 


was glad he had looked up his old friend. After 
this amazingly unforeseen disclosure she gave 
him her hand, which was cool and natural of 
touch. “My long sleep has greatly refreshed 
me, I think,” she furthermore said. “Even if 
I stay awake a good deal during the night I 
imagine that I shan’t mind it very much.” 

Moncrieffe felt so relieved, and so palpitatingly 
hopeful of less inclement future relations with 
her, that he could ill find a fit phrase of response. 
Presently she again spoke to him with a most 
reasonable calmness, telling him that she in- 
tended making a great effort in the future to 
bear more bravely both the tedium and suffering 
of her lot. Once more, without a trace of ex- 
citement, she begged him to pardon her. “I 
can’t help hoping,” she added, “that in a little 
while some marked change for good will occur 
to me. I somehow feel to-night that I am going 
to get gradually better henceforward.” 

This last sentence pierced her listener with its 
pathos. His medical knowledge told him that 
she was doomed, that she could never rise ex- 
cept briefly and feebly from the bed whereon she 
lay. But he cheered her with all sorts of com- 
forting answers, and in so doing he played a 
very noble and beautiful part, a part all the more 
noble and beautiful because of the recent torture 
to which she had subjected him, and because of 
that inward sense of having been persecuted by 
fate which many other men would have turned 
into an excuse for the most egotistic self-pity. 

He watched by her till she again fell into a 


330 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


placid slumber, dismissing the nurse. An hour 
or so later he saw the chance of getting a good 
night’s rest, and gladly, tiredly took it. . . 
Then, on the following morning, came the bit- 
ter news, fraught for him with grief and awe. 

He kissed, again and again, the white brow 
of his dear friend. The death of Magnus White- 
wright was a searching and crushing sorrow. It 
seemed strange that Elma should give him, as 
she did, such ample sympathy. She had grown 
strong enough to sit up in an arm-chair; she 
cordially received her father and bade him re- 
main with her during her husband’s enforced 
absences; she was graciousness itself to the 
astonished and somewhat embarrassed nurse. 
All this while she kept saying the most kindly 
things about dear Basil’s loss, and occasionally 
shed a few soft-flowing tears while she talked 
of it. 

The funeral was excessively simple. Almost 
none of the Riverview gentlefolk came to it, 
though the small church was wholly filled. 
Neither Mrs. Thirl wall nor Eloise was present. 
With a great wreath of white roses, however, the 
former sent a letter full of loving-kindness. “I 
dare not risk the strain,” ran one passage in her 
letter, “that such an experience would now mean 
to me. You, of all others, will understand.” 
Beyond question Moncrieffe did understand ; but 
regarding Eloise it was different. He kept say- 
ing to himself “She might have come” ; and yet 
he somehow very clearly perceived her reason 
for remaining away. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


331 


Not only had Whitewright left no close friend 
besides himself, but he had died without near 
relations of either sex. This made his funeral 
exquisitely appealing for Moncrieffe, who stood 
afterward almost the sole mourner beside his 
fresh-made grave. 

And yet the grateful change in Ehna some- 
how lightened her husband’s gloom. It was 
hard for him to grieve now as he would have 
grieved a little while ago. The torturing stress 
of his capitivity had abated ; he no longer had 
that suffocated sense which clad* every hour in 
torment. It astonished and delighted him to find 
that his wife hailed with pleasure the fact of 
Whitewright’s having left him the cottage and 
all his other possessions, of whatever sort. She 
interested herself, a little later, in Moncrieffe’s 
sale of the drug-shop to one of Whitewright’s 
clerks, whom a liberal kinsman backed in the 
purchase of it. 

“This makes you really a capitalist, does it 
not, Basil?” she said to him almost merrily one 
day. “You’ve your own income added to what 
poor Magnus left you, and you’ve that charming 
little cottage besides.” 

“And the cottage, with its small enclosure of 
ground, is so charming nowadays, Elma! The 
vines have almost completely covered it, and the 
trees on the little lawn have grown surpris- 
ingly. . . Perhaps before the end of autumn 
we can drive over there and take a look at it 
together.” 

“Do you think so?” she murmured; and her 


332 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


eyes, made so large by the leanness and pallor of 
her wasted face, burned pleadingly. “Do you 
really think I shall be well enough to go out be- 
fore the cold weather begins?” 

“Why, yes,” he answered, humoring the trust 
of recovery in her which he now knew to be 
baseless and visionary. “You must keep up 
your courage and cheerfulness. There is so 
much in that. ’ ’ 

“And the weakness, Basil? Yesterday I sat 
up twenty minutes longer than the day before. 
Shall I go on improving, do you think?” 

“I’ve every reason to expect that you will.” 

“Every reason to expect! That sounds so 
lukewarm, somehow. But perhaps I want too 
decided a reply. Still, tell me, do you believe I 
shall be perfectly well by three months from 
now?” 

Questions like these were incessantly leveled 
at Moncrieffe, and the magnitude of certain 
charitable falsehoods which he told often caused 
him to ask himself what depths of remorse they 
would have plunged him in if pure mercy had 
not prompted their utterance. 

But other introspections occupied him. “How 
relative,” he reflected, “is all human happiness! 
Here am I, married to a woman whom I do not 
love, and within easy distance of a woman whom 
I love very dearly. And yet just this respite 
and surcease from recent miseries renders me so 
thankful that I can look forward with positive 
exultance to months and years of the same flavor- 
less yet painless existence.” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


333 


“Do you think this change in El is going to 
last?” Blagdon kept asking him, day after day. 
And day after day he would reply that he had 
no belief it would last. But for all the effect his 
answer seemed to produce, it struck him that he 
might as well have prophesied Elma’s quick re- 
possession of health. Her father lost his air of 
dejection, and brightened back to his former self. 
Evidently he either could not or would not be- 
lieve in his daughters doomed condition, now 
that so marked an apparent convalescence had 
befallen her. Meanwhile Moncrieffe felt as if 
he were holding with both hands some fragile 
amphora, brimming with a precious liquid which 
it would be disaster to spill. It was all a flicker 
of seeming vitality, of seeming sanity, both in 
spirit and flesh. Soon the ineradicable disease 
might reassert itself, and in this case her fierce 
grievance against him for having married her 
without the one finer kind of love for her (pre- 
posterous and even ludicrous as such grievance 
was) might reassert itself as well. 

And so he dwelt beneath perpetual omen and 
threat. It was like living with a crazed crea- 
ture ; it was indeed living with a crazed creature 
in nearly every practical sense. And yet there 
were times when Moncrieffe, so large and gen- 
erous and human as he was, felt that the bitter 
and smoldering grievance of this woman was 
immensely to be pitied. No matter how wrong, 
how reckless, even how immodest had been her 
course in seeking to secure what most other 
women would either have had freely proffered 


334 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


them or died without so much as hinting that 
they desired, she was, nevertheless, in her pri- 
mary scorn of convention and her subsequent 
poignancy of disappointment, a figure deeply to 
be pitied. 

At any moment he had steeled himself to re- 
ceive a new shock, and one day it came. She 
conceived the idea of going downstairs, and he 
warned her against making the effort. She per- 
sisted, however, and he had not the courage to 
tell her that if she refused his counsel the step 
might mean her death. And so, between the 
nurse and himself, followed by her alarmed and 
almost breathless parent, and looking a white, 
phantasmal wreck from whom any of her former 
friends might well have shrunk in horror, she 
descended, very slowly and feebly, the great 
main staircase of the mansion. 

“Oh, how bright and pleasant this lovely day 
makes everything look!” she exclaimed, on 
reaching the lower hall. “I’m so glad I insisted 
on coming down ! And it’s all so nice and nat- 
ural! I really believe that after I’ve rested a 
little I can go out on the terrace, and. . Here 
her smile changed to a grimace of agony, and 
she clutched her breast with a short, strangled 
cry. In another minute she had fainted com- 
pletely away. . . Moncrieffe bore her light 
frame upstairs in his own arms. For hours dur- 
ing the rest of the day he expected that every 
breath would be her last. That evening, during 
a brief absence from her room, and while she lay 
in a sort of coma which he himself had induced, 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


335 


he said, wildly and frenziedly to her father: 
“This is almost the end, now, and thank God 
for it!” 

“Basil!” 

Blagdon dashed toward him and caught his 
arm. “How dare you say that?” cried the old 
man. “How dare you thank God that my child 
is dying!” 

In a second Moncrieffe realized the thoughtless 
folly of his words. With gentle force he pressed 
Blagdon into one of the library chairs. ‘ ‘ I beg you 
to pardon me. I didn’t know what I was saying. ’ ’ 

“It seems that you knew rather too well,” 
came the retort, between a scowl and a sob. “I 
guess if you hadn’t you wouldn’t spoken so.” 

“But you mistake, there. I* was thinking 
only of how I had pitied poor Elma, not of how 
I cared for her. I’ve known that something like 
this was sure to happen — I’ve known it for days. ” 

“You’ve said so,” murmured the old man, 
softening a little. Then he suddenly shivered. 
“But oh, to . . to thank God she was going to 
die!” He clenched both hands, and looked up 
at his son-in-law with angry sorrow. 

Moncrieffe grew stern. “I thanked God, if 
you please, that her horrible anguish might soon 
end, with no chance of its repetition. That was 
all.” He caught the old man by either wrist, 
and shook his hands with tender violence, stoop- 
ing over him in pained solicitude. “If I had it 
my way, she would live a hundred years, pro- 
vided she could escape the torture I’ve lately 
seen her suffer.” 


336 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


He softly placed Blagdon’s hands at his sides, 
yet still bent above him. “I believe you would , 
Basil,” he stammered miserably. “I guess I’m 
pretty well knocked over by this relapse of El’s. 
I kept hoping. . . I couldn’t help keep hoping. 
And now you say I was wrong. But you said I 
was wrong for a good while past, didn’t ye?” 

“Oh, I was so positively certain, Mr. Blag- 
don! . . . Listen, please.” 

“Well, well. I am , ain’t I?” 

“Ever since Elma was taken so ill to-day I’ve 
been trying morphine.” 

“Morphine, Basil?” Blagdon was eagerly 
scanning Moncrieffe’s wan face. Something he 
saw there, or believed that he saw, made him 
slip a hand into his son-in-law’s. There are 
actions like these, seemingly slight, that convey 
vast significance. It was now as if Blagdon had 
said, “Haven’t I watched all your devotion to 
her for months past, and do I not know that 
you’ve been to her a husband in a million?” 
But aloud he repeated, with tones of weary 
solemnity, “Morphine, Basil?” And then, in 
a wandering way, he added: “I thought you’d 
given her that long ago. ’ ’ 

“Ho, no. I’ve never given it till to-day. I’ve 
never dared.” 

“Dared?” 

“There were medical reasons. We’ll pass 
over those. To-day I’ve tried it, and it has 
astonished me by its weak effect. Her sleep, 
now, is owing to it, but considering the strength 
of my former treatment she should have had, 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


337 


hours ago, the alleviation from pain that she 
now finds. But still, the thing acts like that 
with some people; no physician can be sure; it’s 
powerless, or worse than powerless, with some 
temperaments. Hers isn’t of that kind, as I’ve 
at last discovered, thank God!” 

“ ‘Thank God’ again, eh?” broke from Blag- 
don. But he did not speak accusingly ; he even ac- 
companied his words with a faintly genial smile. 

“Ah, forget that — forget it!” cried Mon- 
crieffe. And then he broke down a little, his 
eyes glistening as with unshed tears and his chin 
trembling below its dark floss of beard. 

Blagdon got up from his chair, with droll yet 
pathetic speed. “Basil, I’m sorry! . . . There, 
give me your hand. . . That’s right. If El’s 
got to go there’s one thing about it all, and 
that’s this: You'll have kept her alive as long 
as nursing and watching and care- taking could 
fix things, by hook or by crook ! . . . ” 

This concession had its weight with Mon- 
crieffe ; and yet, when he re-entered Elma’s bed- 
room the memory of his infelicitous “Thank 
God” was alive in his brain. “Blagdon will 
remember,” he thought. “His passionate pa- 
ternity will make him harbor that random ex- 
clamation. . . Well, and if this be true? 
Deeply as I pity him, I need not temporize with 
his caprices.” 

An hour or so after he had returned to Elma’s 
room the sick woman awoke, and in great suffer- 
ing. He had dismissed the nurse, who was 
already tired and might be needed later. Till 


388 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


midnight he used his best resources. The mor- 
phine failed as an injection far more than he had 
dreamed of expecting. She drowsed, and then 
waked in agony; drowsed again, and then re- 
awaked, with repetition of her former moans. 

“I wish you would kill me,” she at length 
panted. “Won’t you? won’t you?” 

“Hush, my poor child — hush!” 

“Why doesn’t the morphine stop or at least 
deaden this misery?” 

“Perhaps it will, soon.” 

“Soon! Oh, I’m sick of the word. . . Basil!” 

“Well, my dear?” 

“What a stone I am round your neck! What 
a hideous, loathsome nuisance I am!” 

“Elma! Please don’t !” 

“In your heart of heart you want me to die — 
you know you do.” 

“My dear child, what are you saying?” 

“Of course you don’t put it to yourself in 
plain, blunt terms: ‘I want her to die.’ That 
isn’t what I mean — oh, no. You try to keep the 
wish down — to bury it deep in your spirit, so 
that its voice will only sound, if at all, like the 
cries of somebody being smothered beneath a 
mattress. But all the time, as you know very 
well, you want me to die, you want me to die.” 

She kept wailing the words over and over, and 
as she did so her father entered the room. Mon- 
crieffe met him at the door. “I wouldn’t go 
near her now,” he urged, in a whisper. “You’ll 
only add to her excitement, and there’s a chance 
that she’ll presently get more sleep.” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


339 


Blagdon yielded, recrossing the threshold. But 
Moncrieffe knew that he had heard those horrid 
words, iterated so distressingly from the bed. 
After the door was again closed he went back to 
Elma and sank down on his knees beside her, 
taking her hand — the frailest white atom, now — 
and touching it repeatedly to his lips : 

“My dear wife, I want you to live; I want 
that only, and I am trying my best to bring you 
back to health.” He felt nearly sure that she 
would probably die in a few hours at the fur- 
thest, but he deemed it best to choose these terms 
of speech with her. “Now, pray see if you can’t 
yield yourself to sleep. It may work wonders 
for you, my dear; there’s no medicine so strong 
and gootl.” 

A little later she fell, or seemed to fall, into a 
kind of dose. Anyway, her agonizing moan of 
“you want me to die” ceased, and her eyelids 
dropped over the wild, fevered, steely shine of 
her eyes. 

Suppressing a sigh of blended gratitude and 
pain, Moncrieffe rose and passed into the adjoin- 
ing room. His head throbbed strangely; his 
limbs were full of fluttering tremors. He flung 
himself into an arm-chair and wondered how 
long it would be before her voice again sum- 
moned him. He asked himself, too, why the 
morphine had not done its work in more effect- 
ive way. He had left the bottle, still three quar- 
ters full of it, on the small table at her bedside — 
the bottle which poor Whitewright had given 
him on the evening of his death. He had for- 


340 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


gotten that he had left it there, but even if he 
had remembered this fact it would have been to 
him one of trivial import. 

Of course, he told himself, there were people 
whom all anodynes refused to affect, just as 
there were others whom they made wakeful in- 
stead of somnolent. But Elma had already 
proved herself susceptible to bromides and other 
drugs of narcotic influence. Why, then, had 
these efforts of his to quiet her last moments 
with the mercy of morphine turned out so disas- 
trously futile? 

The whole day had been an arduous one to 
him, and it is not surprising that before long he 
fell into a kind of wakeful sleep, like that of a 
watching dog. His head dropped backward upon 
the tufted rear of the arm-chair, and in this pos- 
ture it perhaps remained nearly an hour. He 
awoke from a grewsome dream in which his 
wife had stood before him, fearfully livid and 
haggard, with a scintillating knife whose point 
§Jie held just over her heart, while she screamed 
in wrath and anguish, “You want me to die!” 

He sat bolt upright in his chair, wide awake 
and listening. Not a sound. Had there been 
any cry from the next chamber? Surely no. 
Surely what he had heard came from the airy 
lips of dream alone. He rose, and passed to 
where Elma lay, pausing and listening at every 
third step, and treading with extreme lightness. 
If at last she really slept he should so hate to 
rouse her. . 

The sick-room was fairly well-lighted; Elma 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


341 


had always detested darkness. As he drew near 
the bed he swiftly concluded that she still slept. 
Her head had sunk so deep into the pillow that 
a white rim of linen rose round it. Her attenu- 
ated neck made a concave line between chin and 
bosom. Suddenly, with a start, he hurried still 
nearer ; he touched her. And then he knew. 

To have been so confident it would come and 
yet to have it come with such appalling speed ! 
He seemed to feel his blood stagnate while he 
stood and stared down at her. And then, as if 
that mouth, now eternally dumb, had moved 
again, he could almost have sworn that he 
heard — 

“ You want me to die /” 

He shook off the ghostly effect of this delu- 
sion. His thoughts flew, in pity and dread, to 
her father. Of course he must be told at once. 
Was it best to ring for a servant, or go himself 
and face the old man’s grief without delay? At 
this point his ej^e fell upon the small table be- 
side the bed. The bottle which had held the 
morphine still stood there, but it was now com- 
pletely empty. 

He snatched it up, to make sure that he did 
not err. Ho; its label bore the name of poor 
Whitewright. She had drunk its contents. Even 
on the verge of a natural death, she had chosen 
to kill herself — willful, headstrong, capricious to 
the very last ! 

Horror-stricken, Moncrieffe stood motionless, 
with the bottle clutched in his hand. 

A near door, leading into the outer hall, was 


342 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


now softly opened. “Basil,” said a low voice, 
which he at once recognized as Blagdon’s. 

He stayed irresolute for several seconds. 
Meanwhile his brain worked at hot speed. . . 
“Why let him know that she killed herself? — 
why let anybody know? Only to-day he heard 
me speak those random words for which he re- 
buked me so fiercely. Then, afterward, he heard 
her dreadful cry — he heard her say that I de- 
sired her death.” 

Moncrieffe had the empty bottle grasped at his 
side in one loose-hanging hand. Suddenly he 
thrust it into his pocket. Then he went and 
faced his father-in-law in the shadow of the half- 
opened door. 

“Basil, how is she?” quavered Blagdon. 

“The . . the end has almost come, Mr. Blag- 
don.” 

“The end? Basil! You don’t mean it !” 

Blagdon was staggering as he jerked out this 
response. Moncrieffe put both arms about him. 

“Sit down before you go to the bed. Wait a 
little. You can’t do anything — you can’t help 
her.” 

“Can’t help her?” 

“No. Wait here. Wait here, first, and com- 
pose yourself . ” 

The old man would not acquiesce. He did 
not struggle, however, to reach his daughter’s 
side. He merely envisaged Moncrieffe, and with 
this simple act showed him the full view of a 
face that for all its heavy commonplace of line 
and mold was one living bereavement. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


343 


“It’s . . over . . then? She’s dead?” 

“Yes. She died very suddenly. It all came 
in a moment. I had no time to call.” 

Before the suffering in those ravenously ardent 
eyes, Moncrieffe dropped his own. 

‘ ‘ Outrageous fortune, ’ ’ rang through his brain. 
“I shall be tortured, now, for an age to come, 
with the dread of having him suspect I killed 
her!” 


XXV. 

Here he was in gross error, and soon told 
himself that the hysteric turbulence of the mo- 
ment had caused him to wrong Elma’s father. 
Blagdon showed not the faintest symptom of 
having suspected that his son-in-law had acted 
otherwise than as his daughter’s vigilant well- 
wisher, up to the final moment of her life. 

And yet Moncrieffe underwent secret tortures. 
He had not told Blagdon that Elma’s death was 
caused by suicide, and he could not blame him- 
self for having kept back from the sorrow- wrung 
old man this wretched fact. Nevertheless he 
felt burdened for days with the guiltiest of se- 
crets. Say what one would, there had been at 
least a slim chance of her living for at least a 
certain time, and his own negligence, forget- 
fulness, carelessness, had caused her to pass 
away as she had done. For of course there 
could be no doubt that despairingly and wan- 
tonly she had seized the bottle and drained it 
to the dregs. To any physician examining her 


344 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


body after death the evidence of her suicide 
would be manifest. And yet here was he, her 
husband, letting her go to her grave with the 
truth unconfessed ! 

In vain during the days that preceded her 
funeral, in vain during the solemn hours of the 
funeral itself, he kept repeating and re-repeat- 
ing to his own thoughts that it had been his 
duty to shield her from the odium which would 
have clung about open disclosure. At times a 
certain stealthy and benumbing terror assailed 
him. Apart from her father, many others had 
doubtless grown aware of her burdensome and 
trying deportment as an invalid. The hired 
nurse had probably babbled of it; Blagdon 
himself, in garrulous moments with neighbors, 
had more than supposably touched upcn it. 
The very air of Riverview had surely been im- 
pregnated with gossip concerning the hard life 
she had led him since their return from Europe. 
For that matter, his own incessant retirement 
must have told its tale. 

What, then, if whispers were circulated about 
the manner of her death? She had killed her- 
self, and no one else in the world knew it ex- 
cept him. She had killed herself, and ought he 
not to have revealed this truth? Ought he not 
to have revealed it in his role of physician — in 
his signing of her death-certificate? Had he 
the right to remain silent? Was ho weak and 
womanish to cry “outrageous fortune” now? 
Was this really a new manifestation of that 
hostile force concerning which he had so con- 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


345 


fidently theorized? Would dear dead Magnus 
have approved his silence? Oh, for Magnus 
to talk with in this grim ordeal! 

On the very morning of the funeral he re- 
ceived a thrilling shock. He glanced over the 
sheets of a newspaper, and saw there the ac- 
count of a poisoning-case which was causing 
wide and excited comment. A physician of re- 
pute in Brooklyn had been suspected of having 
caused his wife’s death through morphine, and 
ten months after the woman’s burial her body 
had been exhumed and traces of the drug found 
in the stomach of the corpse. Dr. Archibald’s 
arrest had just occurred, and the pillars of re- 
spectability had been shaken. So stainlessly ex- 
emplary had many believed him that his threat- 
ened downfall was almost like a sudden collapse 
of the Brooklyn Bridge itself. There were sides 
passionately taken; a tremendous fight would 
soon engage the lawyers, and the coming trial 
promised to be a cause celebre of unparalleled 
note. 

The funeral — a very large one— was held at 
The Terraces. Moncrieffe caught glimpses of 
many familiar faces afterward, when certain 
services were read at the grave. Among these 
faces he saw Eloise’s and Mrs. Thirlwall’s and 
Dunstan’s. The latter looked him full in the 
eyes for a second. The day overhead was 
cloudy, though rainless. Gusts drove through 
the graveyard paths, hurrying before them brit- 
tle swarms of rusted leaves. In this bleak and 


346 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


austere weather Moncrieffe saw a semblance cf 
Dunstan Thirlwall’s chill visage. 

“The man hates me still, I should say,” he 
meditated. “Why should his hate persevere? 
One might think to-day would end it?” 

Soon Moncrieffe might have found a cause for 
the continuance of this hate, if he had cared to 
seek one. 

When he and his father-in-law returned to The 
Terraces a horrible oppressive stillness reigned 
there for both. Moncrieffe wondered what on 
earth his future position should now be. He had 
no idea of remaining in this grand mansion, nor 
did he imagine that Blagdon desired him to do 
so. The old man came home from the funeral 
in a mood of utter silence. He shut himself in 
his apartments, and refused to descend into the 
dining-room when dinner was served. Mon- 
crieffe ate alone, therefore, and quite sparingly. 
Afterward he went upstairs and knocked softly 
at the door of Blagdon’s bedroom. 

“Well?” came a sad, tired voice. 

Moncrieffe tried the door. It was locked. 
“Can I do anything for you?” he asked. 

“Ho, no. It’s you, Basil, ain’t it?” 

“Yes.” 

“Well, I guess I better keep alone till to-mor- 
row. You’ve had your dinner, ain’t you?” 

“I’ve— well, yes, I’ve dined— after a fashion.” 

“All right. Don’t let ’em send me anything. 
J ust leave me alone. I’ll try and brace up to- 
morrow. P’aps I can; I don’ know. I’m lay- 
ing down, now. I’ll go to bed pretty soon, I 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


347 


reckon. I’m all right. Don’t worry about me, 
and don’t send me any victuals. . . There,* now ; 
good-night, Basil.” 

“Good- night, sir.” 

Moncrieffe made up his mind, before retiring 
to his own room in the still, immense, lordly 
house, that he should pass a night of miserable 
wakefulness. On the contrary, he slept more 
serenely than he had done for weeks, and woke 
with queer conscience-stings because of the per- 
fect rest he had enjoyed. 

Blagdon had been up and about hours before 
he seated himself at the breakfast-table. Just 
as he rose from it, the old man joined him. 

“Come in the li’bry, Basil, will you, please?” 

Blagdon’s manner was gentleness itself. They 
were seated together before he again spoke. 

“I guess I’ll stay here right along, Basil,” he 
began. His face looked horribly ravaged, and 
his coloring, the tint of pale straw, brought into 
clearer relief the ponderous contour of cheeks and 
chin. “I been thinking about Paris, but I won’t 
go there yet. She kind o’ seems to be here, and 
I guess I’m going to like the sensation more as 
it keeps on. P’aps I’ll get into a wagon pretty 
soon and go driving about, as I used to. I 
dare say I’ll pull myself together more or less; 
folks mostly do after a knock-down like this. 
If I’d had a boy left, now — but, well, don’t let’s 
talk of that. . . The lawyers ’ll be here by 
about noon, I guess. I know what will she 
made. Do .you?” 

“Will? No. Did she leave a will?” 


348 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


As Monerieffe spoke thus, in tones of the 
most natural surprise, he felt Blagdon’s dull 
gaze focussed hardily on his face. 

“Oh . . you didn’t know she left any will, eh? 
Well, I know. She made it there on the other 
side. Cartwright and Colgate have got it now. 
It gives you the million dollars I gave her when 
she married you.” 

Monerieffe turned pale; then, with brighten- 
ing eyes and lips that twitched under the veiling 
of his beard, he said: 

“You’re quite sure of this? Quite sure? ” 

“She had the will drawn in Paris. I wit- 
nessed it. You’re her sole heir. Every cent of 
the million’s yours, and a good many thousands 
besides, for she hadn’t begun to spend half what’s 
ccme in since I settled the principal on her.” 

Monerieffe slowly rose and went up to his 
father-in-law. “Mr. Blagdon,” he said, “I 
want you to take it all back.” 

“Take it all back? Basil, are you crazy?” 

The old man glared at him with eyes bulging 
dully from their sockets. An attitude of such 
renunciation as this was inconceivable to him. 
Till lately he had lived all his life among fellow- 
mortals with whom lucre was deity. 

“Listen,” said Monerieffe, with soft firmness. 
“I had something when I married Elma; poor 
Magnus Whitewright, as I think you know, left 
me more. I now have an income beyond my 
actual needs. When the lawyers appear to-day 
we can quietly arrange, on my part, an act of 
reversion — ” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


349 


i ‘Goad God !” broke in Blagdon. “I wouldn’t 
consent to it for a million more! She’d — 
she’d ...” He seemed hesitating for some 
cogent form of expression . . “She’d haunt 
me nights if I did,” he presently flashed out. 

“Very well, then,” said Moncrieffe, after a 
pause, as if he unlocked his lips to let each 
word pass through them; “I’ll take the money, 
but I’ll never touch a dollar of it.” 

“How’s that?” 

“I’ll spend it all in charities.” 

Blagdon gave a blunt laugh. “Do as you 
please with it. It’s yours. But I guess you’ll 
keep it. Anyhow, remember this: you ain’t 
going to give it back to me.” His seamed 
face drooped a little, and his poor dim eyes 
visibly misted. “Poor darling! She’d come 
and scold me in my dreams. . . Look here, 
Basil, she always said you was one man in 
ten thousan’. How I believe her. I don’ know 
as I ever liked you half so good after you flared 
up that time in Paris. But I guess I been dead 
wrong about you. I s’pose I’d ’a’ felt like tell- 
ing you to keep mum even if poor El had half 
killed you in one of her tempers — God bless her, 
with all her faults! . . There’s my hand, Basil. 
She was right! They can’t beat you. I see it. 
You don’t care any more for that money than 
if ’twas so much old manure. But you got to 
take it — you got to, understand!” 

A little later the lawyers came. . . Moncrieffe 
felt dazed when the simple yet formal proceed- 
ings were all over. He had himself driven, that 


350 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


afternoon, to the picturesque little cottage in 
which Whitewright had died. Ann was still in 
charge. Everything looked precisely as if the 
dead might appear at any moment. Ann lighted 
some logs and fagots on the deep hearth of the 
sitting-room, and Moncrieffe sank into a chair, 
watching the pennons of flame they soon un- 
furled. He sat thus till the day waned into 
bluish dusk, and outside he could see the nude 
boughs of trees blacken against the glooming 
heaven. 

He was now rich, independently, lavishly 
rich. And yet the woman had made him so 
who in life was jealous almost to madness of 
Eloise Thirl wall. The money had fallen to him 
from the skies, and yet it had brought with it 
no sense of either liberty or command. It 
seemed to rear, instead, a big barrier between 
himself and the one woman he had ever loved, 
a barrier none the less impermeable because 
golden. Greendingle, however much he might 
yearn to bend his steps thither, was for the pres- 
ent fordidden him. For the present! When 
would it be otherwise than forbidden? Would 
he ever feel justified, now, in asking Eloise to 
be his wife? 

“Why not?” an opposing trend of reflection 
urged. “Hereafter — in two years, or at most 
three — you will have won the right of absolute 
self-mastership. Better to spend that interval; 
in other lands. You can write Eloise a certain 
kind of letter. If she replies, you can gradu- 
ally make plain to her, through subsequent 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


351 


correspondence, that you care unchangeably, 
unconquerably for her love.” 

Then the sweet image of Mrs. Thirlwall would 
rise entreatingly before him. At least he was 
free now to go to her again. Did she not need 
him, and ought he not, in the name of his deep 
friendship for this loveliest of souls, go to her 
and make it plain that his future professional 
services were completely at her nod and beck? 

Problem of problems! To appear just now at 
Greendingle would create a very cackle of gossip, 
since Riverview must already have said over its 
dinners and tea-drinkings and random reunions 
that he had paid hot court to Eloise till Elma 
Blagdon’s money had tempted him into a de- 
sertion of her. Oh, yes; he knew, he knew! 
They had prattled like that, and they would 
prattle like that again. Then there was the 
possible indignant grief of Elma’s father. 
Would not he shrink in horror from the idea 
of his son-in-law going to visit the house in 
which Eloise dwelt? 

And yet, after all, why care if the whole of 
Riverview patriciandom broke into acrimonious 
ferment, why care if Blagdon should gnash 
rageful teeth? 

“I’ll go and see my dear friend, Mrs. Thirl- 
wall,” Moncrieffa decided, as he rose from his 
chair before the fire that was now a dreamy 
crimson of spent embers. “I’ll go and see her, 
and I’ll deYote myself to the task of fortify- 
ing her, vivifying her, adding years (if this be 
not a futile venture) to her benign and valued 


352 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


life. Let all River view hold up its hands in 
horror like a new Briareus; let Blagdon fume 
and even shriek disapprobation. The fact that 
Eloise is there has no more to do with my going 
than the fact that so clammy a being as Dun- 
sfcan is there besides. It was well enough for 
me to stay away from my treasured friend while 
Elma lived. Now the case radically alters. I’ll 
write her to-night. . . No, I won’t write her 
to-night, anything of the sort. I’ll go to her 
to-morrow.” 

He gave a last glance at the dying fire, and it 
appealed to him with a kind of melancholy, sanc- 
tioning resemblance to the face of his dead friend. 
He swept a glance round the still, void, familiar 
little room. “It’s just as if Magnus were here, 
somewhere, nowhere, yet inexplainably here” 
he muttered, “and were telling me that I had 
made the bolder choice and- hence the manlier 
and wiser one. . 

But another hour altered his intrepid project. 
He went home to find a note from Mrs. Thirl- 
wall waiting him there. She and Eloise and 
Anita were going South — to Charleston, Sa- 
vannah, and possibly Florida — for several 
months. The plan had been slowly forming 
with her; she had got an invincible dread of 
the coming cold and snow. They would stay 
all winter — till April, at least. She gave him 
certain addresses; he must write now and then 
. . would he not be good enough for that? She 
hated the journey, but she felt the strangest 
yearning for places where the leaves didn’t fall 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


353 


from their boughs, and one only had ice in one^s 
lemonade, or some such refreshing potion; she 
was sure she would never want it even there. . . 
Dunstan would remain at Greendingle till they 
returned in the spring. This, of course, meant 
that he would occasionally give Riverview the 
preference over his chambers in town. . . Then 
followed a few words about the great loss and 
shock which Elma’s death, so sudden even 
though anticipated so long, must have visited 
upon her father. There was not the smallest 
sentence concerning his own widowerhood. 
There was no reference to Eloise except the 
statement that she gladly acquiesced in the 
proposed trip. The letter closed somewhat 
abruptly, with a frank confession of fatigue, 
and a little postscript which told of how Anita 
was in a seventh heaven at the thought of go- 
ing where she could see real oranges, big and 
juicy enough for anybody to eat, grow on real 
trees. 

This letter, in the pangs it cost Moncrieffe, 
told him how keen had been his wish to see 
Eloise once again. Before another day passed 
he spoke with Blagdon about going abroad. The 
old man did not take kindly, at first, to this 
announcement. It was evident that he had ex- 
pected a wholly different course on the part of 
his son-in-law — a year, at least, of monastic re- 
nunciation and retirement. This diversion and 
publicity of travel in foreign countries had for 
him a flavor of sacrilege. Still, he made no 
attempt to oppose Moncrieffe’s plan, and even 


354 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


counseled him, after the first flush of surprise, 
to carry it out. 

“I guess you wouldn’t have a very lively 
time, Basil, staying here and listening to me 
sing her praises all winter. For I do sing ’em; 
I know I do!” He shook his head with an air 
of self-convicting reverie. “I’m afraid all the 
neighbors round here will begin to think me an 
awful nuisance; they’ll cross the road to get out 
o’ my way. As soon as I meet a soul I begin — 
I can’t help it. ‘A pleasant day, Mr. Blagdon.’ 
‘Yes, sir,’ I say — and then I’m right off into 
talk about her. It’s how she suffered, and how 
brave she was, and how little she complained, 
and how good and kind and sweet she always 
behaved to me.” 

“Heavens!” thought Moncrieffe, as he lis- 
tened. “Let Byron’s line be altered for ever- 
more, and let it run — 

‘Believe a father or an epitaph.’ ” 

“But you go, Basil,” continued the old man; 
“just you suit yourself and go. I don’t need 
you here; I don’t need anybody. I got a few 
years left me, I s’pose, and I ain’t going to be 
much good in ’em for anything except to make 
a kind of harmless crank o’ myself, telling folks 
how my heart’s broke, and showing ’em the 
pieces.” 

Within the next fortnight Moncrieffe sailed 
for Paris. Before doing so he wrote Mrs. Thirl- 
wall, cordially though not at all at length, and 
giving her his banker’s address. Paris was 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


355 


leaden-skied and wintry when he reached it, 
and he remained there only a few days, pushing 
“down,” as we Americans say, to Rome. Here 
the splendors of art and reminiscence, greatly 
though he enjoyed gazing upon them, were 
gloomed by an incessant taunt. He felt sol- 
emnly alone, and his loneliness could be miti- 
gated in but a single way. There were times 
when he positively forgot that Elma had ever 
existed; only a physical sense of the great fa- 
tigue to which her long and irksome illness 
had subjected him now remained. A hungry 
yearning for the companionship of Eloise 
had asserted itself. Whenever he thrilled be- 
fore some great painting or statue this longing 
was potently enkindled. He kept telling him- 
self how Eloise would have loved all these 
inspiring sights, how her rich-lit eyes would 
have duplicated in symbol the sweet disarray 
of her entranced spirit. Phrases and words of 
hers came back to him; it was with him as if 
a door in his soul, which he himself had stoically 
shut against her and all that might concern her 
forbidden loveliness, were now reopened. 

. By about the beginning of March he reached 
Venice, having roamed with leisurely slowness 
the lower region of our world’s most famed and 
historic peninsula. All this time he had been 
conscious of a lurking bodily distress, vague 
and yet onerous. He comprehended clearly 
that it was the result of his past racking ex- 
periences with Elma. It was lassitude, and at 
times it was also a hovering and inexplicable 


356 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


pain. At Venice, a few days after he arrived 
there, it became tangible and enervating. He 
took to his bed, one afternoon, believing that 
the weakness and headache which were afflict- 
ing him would pass after an interim of reason- 
able rest. He had secured fortunate apartments 
that overlooked the Grand Canal; money he 
spent with a careless hand, nowadays, often 
thinking what joy it would have been to know 
that these heedless expenditures were produc- 
tive of pleasure and ease to her. That same 
morning a letter from Mrs. Thirlwall had been 
handed to him. It was dated from Savannah, 
it softly raved over the climate there, and it 
amiably upbraided him for never having writen. 

“Dunstan informs me,” it continued, “that 
you are still abroad. He merely stated this in 
reply to an inquiry I sent him. Occasionally, 
at River view, he has met Mr. Blagdon, who has 
told him that you are spending the winter in 
Italy. Bo you write to Mr. Blagdon and not to 
me! Well, I’m not blaming you for that, and 
Heaven knows I can feel with you in whatever 
pity the poor desolate old man may keep alive 
during your absence from him; for my son de- 
scribes him as pathetically reminiscent of his 
lost child; he talks of nothing else, and talks of 
her as long as the patience of listeners will per- 
mit. You know Dunstan’s languid sympathies 
and general cynic outlook. I was amazed to 
learn from him that after meeting your father- 
in-law twice (once at the post-office in the vil- 
lage and once while driving near his home) a 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


357 


little series of visits had been the result. Think 
of it; is it not odd? Dunstan has gone to The 
Terraces and smoked a cigar, two or three even- 
ings, in Mr. Blagdon’s library. When one 
thinks, when one remembers, this development 
seems pregnant (pray does it not?) with the most 
curious and irritating comedy. Eloise and I 
have puzzled our wits for some solution of the 
droll mystery. That Dunstan should so occupy 
himself, he who has more than once wounded me 
by insolent unconcern of his elders, he whom it 
bores to exchange more than a sentence with 
nine-tenths of the people he meets! 

“There! I have mentioned Eloise’s name, and 
l am constrained, somehow, to re-write it. My 
pen defies discipline; it will have its way; you 
see, it has already forced me to do its bidding. 
And so, my dear friend, I must confess to you 
that I have told my niece everything you told 
me on a certain day at Greendingle. I mean, 
of course, about the letter yod had written her, 
about your summons to The Terraces, about the 
action pursued by that strangely obdurate girl 
(peace rest her!) who afterward became your 
wife. Eloise listened, and in her altering face 
I saw immense pity. Then pity changed to 
relief, and I watched two tiny stars of joy 
swim up into her dear shadowy eyes. I think 
she understands it all now. I don’t know if 
she blames you still. I have never heard her 
breathe a word of blame at any time. Perhaps 
she has suffered far more than I could detect. 
But I know she has suffered greatly, in silence 


358 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


and in secrecy. Let me assure you of this: the 
keynote of her charming nature is constancy, 
and forgiveness is one of her loveliest graces. 
Ah, Basil Moncrieffe, if I could live to see you 
her husband! In some people these lines I 
am writing would wake a sneer. Such people 
would say that I am simply swayed by the 
most selfish forces. They would be quite right. 
Why should I not want my treasured Eloise to 
marry the man whom I believe she loves with 
a large and noble passion? — the man of whom 
I am certain that he loves her , clingingly and 
inalienably, despite that despotism of un- 
toward fate which he has made so clear to 
me and in which my woman’s heart believes 
at this moment with i ntensest faith! Again 
and again I have lived through that episode 
which you described to me with such quiet yet 
vivid eloquence. Again and again I have felt 
that what others might have condemned in you 
as culpable passivity was neither more nor less 
than the uncontrollable yielding to that same 
‘ outrageous fortune ’ in whose ‘ slings and 
arrows’ your self-defensive arguments have 
taught me firmly to believe. . . And now, as 
to my health, in which you have long taken so 
tender and comforting an interest. I have my 
good days, my better ones and my best ones. 
During the first I fear that I selfishly long for 
you as a physician ; during the second I desire 
you as physician and companion interblent; 
during the third I crave merely the delicate 
luxury of your friendship. In this bland air 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


359 


what talks and strolls we could have together! 
How I would love to discuss with you the life 
of Magnus Whitewright, your vanished friend, 
and seek to reach, through your aid, some sort 
of conclusion as to the real worth of his mag- 
nificently self-effacing philosophy ! . . .” 

And so the letter ran on, rich to Moncrieffe 
with suggestion and delight. But already the 
leveling prostration had laid hands on him, and 
when fever and delirium were born of it, slight 
wonder that he raved to his watchers of Eloise’s 
pardon and her unperished love. He might as 
well have spoken of Saturn and his rings, for 
all that his Italian custodians understood of 
what he wildly vented; for he had traveled in 
simple style, without a servant, not yet having 
sunk into any easeful ruts plowed by the un- 
accustomed force of his new-gained'"Wealth. 

It was a frightful illness, and his recovery 
from it lasted for weeks. Midsummer was 
regnant over Venice before he awoke to any 
sane comprehension of the dimness which the 
Valley of the Shadow had cast upon him. And 
then midsummer lapsed into autumn before he 
had regained his lest strength. 

it was lucky that this measurably came back 
to him in time for certain tidings, by which he 
was met on the first day of his return to Paris. 
Otherwise the effect might have Keen fatal — for 
they were tidings that made his head swim 
giddily and flooded his eyes with tears. 


360 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


XXVI. 

Eloise had written him, and at Riverview. 
She and Anita had recently arrived there from 
Savannah. They had borne with them the dead 
body of Mrs. Thirl wall. The letter had been de- 
layed at his banker’s for months. 

“Sudden death,” Eloise wrote, “has always 
seemed to me unutterably horrible. And yet 
Aunt Emily, though she died with great sud- 
denness, died with surpassing peace. She had 
just taken a stroll with Anita and myself through 
the quaint and quiet Southern town. I had 
never for weeks known her spirits more dashing- 
ly lively. For some reason she chose to speak 
of the different outlooks from which different 
people of strong temperament regard life. Your 
dead friend, Magnus White wright, had always 
interested her, and she said that she envied him 
the grand poise and security of his resignation. 
‘But it came,’ she pursued, ‘from too contempt- 
uous an estimate of his fellow-men. Not that 
he meant it for contemptuous, ’ she added, ‘since 
indeed I am sure that he meant it for a justice 
inflexibly strict. He had made up his mind that 
we are all no larger than we might look from 
the top of Mctunt Blanc, at which height, if one 
could view us at all, one would not find that a 
Newton was discernible from an idiot. It’s 
a melancholy view to take of us, but may not 
the view of humanity itself toward itself be the 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


361 


most intemperate of misconceptions?’ ... I 
answered her heatedly, and told her that I be- 
lieved we could never sufficiently revere the an- 
gelic element which lurked within us, the possi- 
bility of self-elevation which might climb to the 
feet of our Creator and gain, through the pa- 
tience and bravery of having thus sought Him 
face to face, an exquisite surety that many baf- 
fling mysteries would hereafter be unraveled for 
us. . . My aunt smote me laughingly on the 
cheek and called me a transcendentalist of the 
true type. ‘Perhaps you get nearer to the solv- 
ing of the great problem, you and your trustful, 
emotional kind,’ she said, ‘than any of us who 
are proud with our brains rather than humble 
with our hearts. ’ And in a little while she be- 
gan to speak of you; and Anita, who had been 
rather pensive though not in the least peevish, 
as she walked between us, brightened at your 
name. ‘I wish Dr. Moncrieffe were here!’ cried 
my cousin. ‘So do I,’ said Aunt Emily, ‘so do 
I, ’ with a sudden inflection of odd, wild tender- 
ness that yet rings in my ears. Then, much 
more soberly, she spoke of your having told her” 
(Eloise’s writing became a little erratic, at this 
point, varying from its graceful precision and 
showing one or two salient erasures) “that you 
believed in an evil destiny controlling our deeds, 
against which all personal struggle was power- 
less. ‘That is another outlook upon life,’ she 
said, ‘and who shall dare state that it is a falla- 
cious one?’ I answered her (quite daringly and 
illogically, you may think) that to me it was very 


362 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


fallacious indeed. I said that I was as certain 
of goodness in the world as I was certain of light 
in the sky, and that just as I accepted shadow a& 
the natural result of light and the inseparable 
companion of it, so I accepted calamity as the 
natural result and inseparable companion of hap- 
piness. ‘Ah,’ she replied, ‘that is picturesque, 
but it is not convincing. Why the light if also 
the shadow? Why the happiness if also the 
calamity? That God of yours’ (I hated to have 
her call Him that God of mine !) ‘might have 
made a perfect world if He had chosen. ’ And 
again I answered her, perhaps too heatedly this 
time: ‘If I questioned God’s intent I should not 
love Him. For it is His intent and not His 
power that I love. If He were not almighty I 
should love Him no less than I do now. Per- 
haps He even tried to make that perfect world 
and could not . . who knows? But in that case 
I should love Him as much because He tried 
and failed as I love Him now because I am cer- 
tain that He had no need of either trying or fail- 
ing and that we shall understand soon or late the 
mighty Why of His having had no such need. ’ . . 
She seemed to like these words, and it struck 
me as queer that they should please her, for often 
she would flare up into a kind of pleasant 
haughtiness when I spoke like this, and- say to 
me' that I read too little and thought too little 
on these great subjects, after the fashion of all 
fanatical pietists, or give me some such chiding 
though half-playful reply. But now I heard her 
softly repeat certain fragments of what I had 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


363 


been saying, as we walked on in silence. To- 
ward the end of our walk she complained of 
feeling tired, and when we reached home she at 
once sank on a lounge and lay there quite still, 
as I had often seen her do before. Only yester- 
day we had decided that the weather was grow- 
ing too warm for us to remain much longer in 
Savannah. But this evening the air was en- 
chantingly fresh, and yet balmy enough for a 
big window at her side to be left open. Directly 
in front of this window was a grove of superb 
magnolias, and between their stems the spring 
day — that incomparable spring day of the South ! 
— died in a splendid cloud-tangle of lavender, 
silver and scarlet. 

“Something made me go to her sijle and slip 
my hand in hers. She started, and averted her 
eyes from the sunset, which was not dazzling 
any longer, though a minute before it had been 
fiercely so, while yet possible to watch because 
of the great curving magnolia-leaves. ‘Aunt,’ 
I said, ‘are you more tired than usual?’ She 
laughed ever so faintly at this, and said : ‘ Dear 
Eloise, you speak as if I were always tired. ’ I 
at once said, ‘Oh, aunt, you’re the most animated 
of beings nearly always; but sometimes, you 
know — ’ And there I paused. Her paleness 
frightened me. She slowly turned her eyes to- 
ward the sunset again, and to my surprise I 
heard her murmur my own recent words: ‘7/ 
He were not almighty I should love Him no 
less than I do now. Perhaps He even tried 
to make that perfect world and could not . . 


364 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


who knows f * . . . ‘Aunt!’ I suddenly called. 
But she did not~ answer. I leaned over the 
couch, and shot a glance down at her face, 
smitten by the drowsy afterglow. Her eyes had 
closed, and a smile had slightly cleft her lips. 
These signs would not have told me. What 
told me was her unearthly pallor. . . Nothing 
is at all clear to me for hours afterward. People 
in the hotel were very kind and merciful. They 
said that I was calm and did not weep much. . . 
One of them, an elderly man, who luckily had 
business in the North, came on with Anita and 
me. Telegrams were sent to Dunstan. He met 
us at the railway terminus near New York. We 
had brought her. Dunstan has been cold, as 
usual, but not ungracious. I am at Greendingle 
now, and write these lines on the evening of the 
day of the funeral. I would like to tell you 
more, but my hand will scarcely let me, for I 
am so debilitated, so unstrung.” 

Soon after this the letter abruptly ended. 
“And months,” thought Moncrieffe, “have 
elapsed since Eloise wrote me these pages!” 

There were other letters, and among them 
three or four from his father-in-law, all brief 
and all full of surprise that he himself had not 
written. On the following day, Saturday, a 
steamer would sail from Havre. Moncrieffe 
engaged passage upon it and reached it just in 
time. 

“How,” he kept asking himself all through 
the voyage, “shall I find that matters have 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


365 


turned out between Dunstan and his cousin? 
Has the brute in him risen predominant? Is 
poor Eloise torn from Anita and forced to seek 
refuge Heaven knows where? In what misera- 
ble state of penury, of despondence, may I not 
light upon her?”. . . 

Meanwhile the fortunes of Eloise had been 
wrapped in no such somber terrors as those 
which Moncrieffe had imagined. It took the girl 
two or three days after the funeral of her aunt to 
realize that Dunstan had decided to treat her with 
sullen yet distinct courtesy. She marveled at 
his motive for thus disporting himself. Mrs. 
Thirl wall’s will, when opened, showed that she 
had left money to her niece which would give a 
life-income of twenty-five hundred dollars a year. 
This to Eloise meant exquisite relief. But she 
waited almost breathlessly, after hearing the 
tidings, for some ireful act on the part of her 
cousin. None came. Was she to be separated 
from poor, clinging, motherless little Anita? No 
such mandate met her. Was she to be exiled 
once and for all from dear old Greendingle? Ap- 
parently her continued residence there would be 
sanctioned until that horrible railway caused the 
complete demolition of the family home. 

Dunstan would now and then speak of his 
negotiations with the company, and the great 
price which he might soon receive from it. 
Eloise, too comforted by his toleration of her 
presence, ventured to ask but a few vague ques- 
tions. All through the summer she felt, some- 


366 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


how, that in one respect at least the ground was 
growing firmer beneath her feet ; that the tragedy 
of having her helpless little Anita ravished from 
her looked less and less imminent as days passed 
by. So acute was the thankfulness thus created 
in her that she often failed to feel the full poig- 
nance of that disappointment which Moncrieffe’s 
unexplained silence had roused. 

Dunstan paid decorous heed to the term of his 
mourning; he abjured Newport, this summer, 
just as inflexibly as he abjured gold shirt-studs. 
But he made frequent trips into town and stayed 
there for days at a time. The selectest and 
smallest of his clubs knew him, though he 
avoided the larger ones. He would often go 
down-town into the offices of lawyers and bro- 
kers, discussing with them investments, pur- 
chases or sales. He had now full control of his 
late father’s property, and though the handling 
of Eloise’s legacy had been placed by the terms 
of his mother’s will in other hands than his own, 
he more than once looked after the regular pay- 
ment of her monthly returns. 

When at Greendingle he was grave and taci- 
turn with Eloise, but never palpably uncivil. 
She took the place at table which her dead aunt 
had vacated ; he allowed her to retain it, and 
seated himself opposite her, while Anita’s chair 
was between them. At first these occasions 
were keenly trying to his cousin, but after a 
while she began to accept them with a certain 
stolid security. She and he would be thus con- 
fronted only at dinner-time, and then the ordeal 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


367 


gradually lost its irksome pungency, and became 
tedium, humdrum yet quite unformidable. The 
long silences grew by degrees less awkward and 
onerous. She no longer felt that they might be 
broken by some eruption of Dunstan’s old inso- 
lence or cynicism. Beyond doubt this new head 
of the family was letting things go placidly on. 

But letting things go placidly on to what ter- 
minus, what ultimatum? Eloise sometimes 
asked herself this question in nervous alarm. 
What motive lay hid beneath his colorless quies- 
cence? Did any motive underlie it? Was he 
acting a part? By September she had got to be 
hopefully dubious on these points; and yet the 
doubt often sang gnatlike in the ears of her 
spirit. 

The truth was, Dunstan Thirlwall’s deep hate 
of Moncrieffe had in strange way reacted bene- 
ficially to his cousin. It was hate of a vast di- 
mension, and the psychological marvel that so 
small a nature could accommodate it might well 
be matter for dismay. Elma’s deairh had fed it 
with new and vicious vitality. This event ap- 
pealed to Dunstan as the very crowning grace 
of luck when viewed in relation to the fortune 
which had gone along with it. He learned of 
the fortune through Blagdon, during those visits 
of which we have heard. His primary motive 
for going to The Terraces after having met the 
old man on one of the Riverview roads had been 
actual hunger of curiosity. He wanted to find 
out if these reports were true which claimed that 
Elma had left a million to her husband. It 


368 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


bored him distressingly to talk with the old man 
at all. He thought him dull and vulgar past ex- 
pression, and nothing that he said struck him as 
in the faintest degree either droll or clever. Ho 
one whom he did not think “refined” and “well- 
bred” ever interested him in the least. He 
would have subjected Elma, if he had married 
her, to a course of rigorous training in manners 
— or tried to do so. 

Blagdon, during those visits at The Terraces, 
was mournfully garrulous. He spoke of his 
child’s married life as though it had been, on her 
own side, one of shining saintliness. At length 
an adroit question or two made him disclose the 
exact amount of her wifely bequest. Sitting in 
that somber and charming library, Dunstan felt 
a new stab of jealous loathing. 

That night he slept fitfully, and passed more 
than a single hour in brooding rancor. His de- 
testation of the calm and easy conquest which 
Moncrieffe had secured over him took huge and 
eerie proportions. Naturally a thirst for ven- 
geance followed these viperous moods. Both 
in the country and in town he would find him- 
self musing on a possible way to dim the luster 
of so calmly insolent a triumph. The very ro- 
manticism of his hate at times evoked from him 
prosaic humor. He would stroll, rather late at 
night, into an almost void little club — the little 
club that he liked best because so intensely de- 
voted to the daintiness of class and so abhorrent 
of the mass, in all such manifestations of it as 
feeling and passion and the nudity of undraped 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


369 


nature. And here the very decorum of the well- 
trained waiters, the very quietude of the mossy- 
carpeted chambers, the very sense everywhere 
of order and elegance and repose, would create 
a kind of mockingly grave background for the 
self- admitted flamboyance of his hate. 

And yet, scoff it as he would, the hate still 
abode with him. It somehow seemed, one even- 
ing, to drag him again to The Terraces. Blag- 
don welcomed him with an unexpected affability, 
and asked with bluff warmth about his absent 
relatives. They soon drifted again into the 
stately and dusky library, of whose delicious 
hanging and carvings, as it seemed to Dunstan, 
his host was no more aware than if they had 
been calico and commonest pine. Inevitably 
Blagdon began to talk of his dead child. He 
had been reading two or three books on the dis- 
ease from which she died, and he now spoke of 
her sufferings as if with a sort of resentful scowl 
at Providence for having made them so excep- 
tionally harsh. 

“Was no morphine ever given her?” Dunstan 
here asked. 

“Well, you see,” came the slow answer, “Ba- 
sil used to be afraid of it. She kept wanting it 
and begging for it, but he didn’t give her the 
least speck till that last day.” 

“Yes . . I see. And then he did give it?” 

“So he told me.” 

“And it brought relief?” 

Blagdon shook his head, in pensive rumina- 
tion. “He couldn’t see as it did. He wondered 


370 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


why, and he couldn’t make the thing out at 
all.” 

4 ‘Really?” fell from Dunstan. “You mean 
that the drug failed of effect?” 

“Yes. I guess it did.” Blagdon stared at 
the floor, and then raised his eyes to the ceiling 
and stared roamingly at that. “I — guess — it 
must have. It don’t catch on to some people. 
I s’pose you know about my patent medicines. 
I never dared to so much as even touch it in 
them. But, anyhow, it didn’t do that dear child, 
o’ mine a bit of good till just at the last.” 

“The last?” questioned Dunstan. He echoed 
these two words with an accent crisp and sharp. 

Blagdon started a little, and looked at him full. 
“Why, yes,” he murmured, in his mournful, 
pausing way, “why, yes. Basil had got almost 
crazy with her. She wouldn’t see any other 
doctor, you know, and she just laid there in 
awful pain.” 

“M — m — yes. Ah . . . M — m — yes. Dr. Mon- 
crieffe, you say, had become — er — almost crazy?” 

“Sure enough, Mr. Thirl wall, sure enough! 
And I don’t wonder. Why, she wouldn’t even 
let me come into the room that day!” piped the 
old man, pitifully oblivious of all former days 
when a like prohibition was operative. 

“This,” said Dunstan, after quite a long si- 
lence, “is an exceedingly nice cigar, Mr. Blag- 
don.” 

The old man brightened vaguely, and recrossed 
his legs. “I’m glad you like it, I’m glad you 
like it. I have ’em here, but I don’t smoke ’em. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


371 


I don’t smoke any more at all. It makes me 
nervous nowadays, so I quit it. They’re Basil’s, 
those cigars are; he had ’em sent up from the 
city a little while before he sailed, and afterward 
I guess he must have forgot ’em.” 

“Indeed?” 

Dunstan felt like flinging the rich- tinted olive- 
and-brown thing from which he had been puffing 
pleasant fumes into the big fireplace where some 
ruddy logs were flaming. But he kept it decor- 
ously between thumb and finger while he pur- 
sued, as if musingly : 

‘ ‘ And when death came to your daughter it 
was— er— quite sudden, was it not?” 

“Oh, like a flash. She went right off in no 
time at all. Even Basil didn’t know. The mor- 
phine, you see, had quieted her at last, and he’d 
gone into the other room. He says he fell into 
a kind of doze, and waked all of a sudden— a 
cat-nap, you know.” 

“Yes. * Well?” 

“He got up and went back into the room 
where she was laying, and then he saw, right in 
a second, that ’tvvas all over . . all over.” Blag- 
don here drooped his head again, and spoke with 
a solemn monotony. “I guess I was pretty fool- 
ish when I got the news. I felt like hitting 
poor Basil, but I just kept quiet and tried to 
steady my jumping nerves as well as I could. . . 
You see, we’d had a kind of a growl, him and 
I, a little while before. He’d come out o’ the 
sick room and said to me. . . I can remember 
his exact words. . . He’d said to me, ‘This 


373 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


is almost the end, now, and thank God for 
it.’ ” 

“Yes? Really? He said that? How odd!” 

Blagdon shot a slant look into his guest’s 
composed face. “Oh, but he didn’t mean it, 
you know, Basil didn’t ! He only thought, you 
understand, about the relief she’d get from her 
mis’ry.” 

“Quite so.” 

“And then, after that — after we’d made up, 
and I’d got to feel pretty well ashamed o’ my- 
self, and he’d told me how he’d been trying mor- 
phine on her all that day, and how it didn’t seem 
to work right, I — I got another queer shock.” 
At this point the voluble old man rubbed his 
face, with the double-handed gesture of one 
washing it. He gave something between a sigh 
and a yawn as he went on: “Oh, I blab too 
much. I d’clare it’s getting babyish of me — 
downright babyish.” 

“You spoke of receiving another shock,” said 
Dunstan, as carelessly as a covert excitement 
would allow. 

“A shock? Ho, I didn’t, did I? . . . Oh, 
yes,” and Blagdon laughed drearily. “Poor El, 
poor darling El, she was kind of out of her 
head, that night, you see, and no wonder, no 
wonder. . . I happened to come into her room. 
I knew she didn’t want me, or anybody but 
Basil, not even the nurse. But I heard her 
moaning, and I was outside in the hall, waiting 
there for some news, better or worse, and expect- 
ing worse every second, and her moans got 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


373 


louder, and so I slipped in. And as I did that 
she wailed out, ‘You want me to die!’ It went 
through me just like a knife, and it give me a 
kind o’ tigerish feeling to Basil.” 

“Yes — yes — of course.” 

“But I was over it all in a minute. . . I don’ 
know what made me think of it now, except 
that I ain’t ever so contented, somehow, as when 
I’m running on and on with my gabble about 
that poor dear girl. 0’ course she didn’t know 
a word o’ what she was telling him. That 
stands to reason ; for I will say it of Basil that 
a kinder, watchfuler, tenderer husband than 
him never drew breath. . 

As a rule Dunstan Thirl wall was a good 
sleeper. People of his sluggish mind and health- 
ful frame usually are. But to-night he lay 
awake for a good while and felt his nerves tin- 
gling, through this term of insomnia, with a 
strange, insidious, exhilarant hope. 


XXVII. 

Could it have been possible? 

This question kept haunting Dunstan as a fly 
haunts a wound. From one point of view sus- 
picion seemed absurd ; from another it wore jus- 
tifying tinges. That “thank God!” of Mon- 
crieffe’s and that woful plaint of Elma’s were 
surely packed with convicting hints. 

Intense hate, in minds of no imagination, 


3?4 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


crawls, drowses and broods. It never makes for 
itself pictures and portraits of its own destruc- 
tive longings; it lives on, sleepily and yet ma- 
lignly, like a sore that will not heal, yet not like 
a cancer that strikes fibers of sure though sullen 
death into the organism its wicked fangs have 
clutched. It is the opposite of its blithe sister, 
love, which can almost deify (for a time, at 
least) the most torpid of natures. Love puts 
imagination into the dullest oaf. He sees the 
stars for the first time in his earthward-gazing 
life, and he hears in the pastoral prattle of a 
■wayside brook the laughter of nymph and 
oread. 

Dunstan would never have dreamed of suspect- 
ing that Moncrieffe’s last hours with his wife 
might have been colored by crime if to this rank- 
ling hate of his a certain bit of reigning news- 
paper sensationalism had not forcibly spoken. 

It was the Archibald poisoning case, and it 
still held the public heed with a retentive grip. 
The body of Dr. Archibald’s wife had shown 
evidence of morphine to a degree that threatened 
with disgraceful death a man hitherto respected 
by thousands and beloved by hundreds. The 
trial had thralled public attention in a rare way. 
It had just begun, and it threatened to last for 
weeks. “There is nothing less improbable,” 
Dunstan would muse, “in the idea of that phy- 
sician having killed his wife through the fa- 
cilities afforded by his place as watcher at her 
bedside, than in the idea that Moncrieffe took 
a similar course.” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


375 


Before long he began to yearn with profound- 
est desire that this “upstart” who had slipped 
ahead of him, thrust him aside, slapped him in 
the face, might have steeped himself in undis- 
covered crime. He had felt sure that Mon- 
crieffe loved Eloise, months before he became so 
suddenly engaged to Elma Blagdon. What was 
more supposable than that he should have seen 
a nice and safe chance of cutting the slender 
thread between himself and opulent freedom? 
Blagdon, it was true, had droned on about his 
devotion and fidelity. Things like these had 
already been said concerning the criminal now 
so conspicuous. Had Dr. Moncrieffe’s life and 
record been cleaner than those of Dr. Archibald? 
They had certainly not been half so celebrated. 

If Dunstan had not thought that his abhorred 
foe would return, sooner or later, to Riverview 
with an intent of meeting and perhaps marrying 
Eloise, he would doubtless have treated his 
cousin far less courteously after she returned 
from Savannah with the mournful burden of his 
mother’s corpse. As it was, he found himself 
waiting, waiting, always waiting, for Mon- 
crieffe’s reappearance and his prompt consequent 
evidence that Eloise was unforgotten. 

Then came the wearisome summer, during 
which he told himself that Moncrieffe never 
meant to return at all. “He’s off there with 
fifty thousand a year, and he’ll stay,” Dunstan 
gloomily thought. “I’cZ stay, if I were he. 
What’s Eloise to him now? What would any 
Eloise be to me if I’d all that money and all 


376 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


Europe to choose new loves and diversions 
from?” 

The tidings of Moncrieffe’s return gave a 
fresh thrill to his hate. Affairs, at Greendingle 
were going on decorously enough. He had be- 
gun to call himself a fool for even fancying that 
Moncrieffe would come back at all, when one 
day it struck him as the better sort of policy to 
say to Eloise at the close of an habitually tedious 
dinner : ‘ ‘ Ah — er — by the by — did you hear that 
Moncrieffe had got back from the other side?” 

Eloise paled, then flushed. “No, Dunstan, I 
hadn’t heard.” 

Anita, seated at her side, broke forth in rapid 
tremolo: “Dr. Moncrieffe’s back? Oh, I’m so 
glad! Will he be here soon?” And then the 
dwarfish little shape nestled itself close to Eloise, 
as if in fear of having offended by this unwary 
outburst. 

“I dare say you’ll hear quite soon,” said Dun- 
stan, absorbedly cracking a walnut with one of 
the silver implements designed for such employ. 
“It’s quite probable, isn’t it, that he’ll look you 
up soon?” 

“I don’t know; I — I can’t be at all sure of 
it,” replied Eloise, flushing again, and stam- 
mering. 

Moncrieffe spent a day in New York, going 
promptly the next morning to his father-in-law 
at Riverview. Blagdon received him with con- 
sternation and not a little cordiality. 

“I’d have skipped right acrost. Basil,” he at 
length said, after having listened for a good 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


377 


while with earnest attention, “if I’d only known 
you was so sick. But the devil of it’s been that 
I didn’t know you had an ache nor a pain. I 
just s’posed you’d got kiting round there, and 
hadn’t remembered me — or, to put it funny but 
nearer what I mean — that you’d forgot to re- 
member me.” 

“I remembered not to forget you,” said Mon- 
crieffe, seriously. “That’s an equally funny 
way of putting it, but a decidedly truer one.” 

Blagdon’s diffuse loquacity soon struck him 
as almost infantile, and he wondered, after an 
interim of observant silence, if the old man’s 
brain had not become unbalanced by his mor- 
dant and phenomenal grief. He rambled on 
about Elma’s last hours till they became pierc- 
ingly re-apparent to his hearer. He spoke of 
his belief that she sometimes visited him in 
dreams, and of his intention to seek a spiritual- 
istic medium as soon as he could find one of 
good repute. At last he mentioned the visits 
paid him by Dunstan. “He’s a pretty fair sort 
of chap, after all, Basil,” next came the com- 
ment. “He seemed to feel it real painful when 
I told him how El suffered before she went.” 

“I don’t believe he cared how she suffered,” 
said Moncrieffe, with sternness. “I don’t be- 
lieve, Mr. Blagdon, that he ever cared how any- 
body suffered.” 

“Whew! You ain't friends, are ye? Still, I 
didn’t hear him — er — say one word, Basil — ” 

“Against me ? Why should he? I’ve never 
wronged him in the faintest way. Though 


378 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


neither, for that matter, has the good and lovely 
girl, his cousin, Eloise Thirlwall.” 

Blagdon pulled down the corners of his mouth. 
“A sort of a left-handed cousin, ain’t she?” 

Moncrieffe felt the color fly into his cheeks. 
“Call her so if you like,” he said, very restrain- 
edly. “That curse of her birth makes her to me 
only more interesting, more distinctive. She’s 
a sweet and noble young woman, and I hope 
with all my heart that she hasn’t been forced to 
endure any shocking persecution from Dunstan. ” 

“It ain’t got round if she has,” returned 
Blagdon, a little curtly. 

“She’s still living there at the old place?” 

“Yes. She’s there. O’ course you know that 
Mrs. Thirlwall died down South somewheres 
about last spring?” 

“Yes. She wrote me.” 

“Oh,” said Blagdon, with a frosty little smile. 
“So you and her corresponded, then?” 

“She wrote me one letter. It was never an- 
swered ; my illness prevented. She told me of 
her aunt’s death, and how she had been left, by 
Mrs. Thirlwall’s will, independent in a modest 
way. That’s all I know, and her letter was 
written months back. If you’ve learned any- 
thing of how she’s getting on there at Green- 
dingle I should be very glad indeed to hear it.” 

“Me? I don’t know anything, except that 
she’s there still. The place’ll be sold pretty soon, 
and a big price ’ll be given for it. The new rail- 
way folks are going to begin by next spring, and 
they want to run right through the middle of 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


379 


the Tkirlwall estate. I ain’t seen Dunstan for a 
good while now. But it’s dead sure he’s got to 
sell, and I shouldn’t be surprised to hear most of 
the papers had been drawn up. All the kicking 
here in Riverview’s ended, and the company is 
going to gut a big slice o’ the graveyard and do 
gen’rally just what it’s a mind to.” 

This same afternoon Moncrieffe resolved to 
appear at Greendingle. But he had no wish 
that the least secrecy should invest his going 
thither. Soon after luncheon he gave an order 
to one of the servants, and had a carriage 
brought to the front entrance. Just as he was 
leaving the hall his father-in-law came in from 
one of those aimless roamings about the grounds 
which not seldom would make the gardeners 
there watch him dubiously, since he so often 
muttered aloud to himself in gruff monotone. 

“You’re going out riding, Basil?” he now 
asked. 

“Yes.” For a moment Moncrieffe hesitated. 
“I’m going to drive over and see Miss Thirl wall 
and poor little Anita. ’ ’ 

“Oh. . . You are ? . . . Well. . .” 

This was all that Blagdon said, but while 
Moncrieffe stepped into the carriage he felt al- 
most as if he had received some stingingly sar- 
castic rebuff. 

When he found himself within the untended, 
familiar lawns of Greendingle a rush of mem- 
ories almost unmanned him. The day was full 
of melancholy winds and mutable, rolling, bluish 
clouds. As he neared the house he shivered one 


380 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


minute with sorrowing remembrance of Emily 
Thirl wall, that powerful, sincere spirit which 
had now forever gone away into the mystery it 
had so often forlornly pondered, and the next 
minute he thrilled with joyous expectation of 
seeing Eloise once again. 

To enter the large, placid, homelike hall was 
to relive that last tumultuous meeting with the 
sweet, ill-starred girl for whose presence he now 
longed. As he dropped into a chair among those 
that stretched their arms to him amid the pleas- 
ant, appealing, unforgotten sitting-room, it 
swept through his mind: “Will she not feel as 
keenly as I that the last time we exchanged 
words together I told her? . . What were my 
words? Oh, yes, I have them back, every sylla- 
ble ! I told her she was the one woman- on earth 
that I could and did love perfectly — the one 
woman on earth that I should go on loving per- 
fectly while life was left me ! 

“She called me cowardly,’ ’ his musings pur- 
sued, while he waited for her to appear. “She 
called me cowardly, or at least she more than 
implied this was her thought of me. And yet, 
dear girl, she forgave me — she forgave me, or 
she would not have written as she did! . . . 
And now I come to her free, and after a year of 
release from that former terrible bondage!” He 
lowered his head, as if weighed upon by a sud- 
den heavier and gloomier force of reverie. “My 
belief, my theory, my pessimism, if one wills to 
call it so? That imp of the air, whose maneuvers 
and machinations I’ve so stoutly persisted in 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


381 


crediting — what power to spoil my future may 
he yet reserve? "VYhat lightning-bolt from what 
stormless heaven may still be waiting me, what 
shipwreck on what quiet sea?” 

The sound of a coming step set his pulses 
a-leap, and he knew, when presently shaking 
hands with Eloise, that his agitation must be 
clear to her. 

As far as he could afterward recollect, his first 
words were full of compassionate regret. “I 
fear you must have thought me very cold and 
indifferent during all your late sorrow and 
trouble !” 

“I wondered . . I wondered,” she began. . . 
Then suddenly her eyes widened. “You’ve been 
ill!” she exclaimed. 

“Am I so altered as that?” 

“You’re not as you were.” Here a laugh 
fluttered sad and sweet from her parting lips 
with what seemed to him the richest uncon- 
scious charm ; no bird ever mounted frcm its 
nest with lovelier grace. “Oh,” she went on, 
sweeping his face with a timid boldness of sur- 
vey, “I am sure that you must have been very 
ill indeed !” 

“It’s thinned me. It’s hoar-frosted my hair 
and beard. Do you mean that it has aged me 
besides?” 

“It has made you different — left its mark.” 
Her gaze was burningly earnest as she went on : 
“And are you quite rid of it now?” 

“Oh, yes, I’m well. I’m almost well at 
last.” Then he spoke for some time, secretly 


382 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


watchful of how intently her mobile features 
told him that she was listening. 

“ Terrible !” she at length sighed. “And you 
were so alone — so alone in a strange land!” 

“Hardly more alcne than you were when your 
poor aunt died.” 

“True — true. But it was not so far away.” 

“You could get hack home; I couldn’t. I had 
to staj r where I was and dream dreams of being 
buried in Italian soil. You could slip up North 
again” (here he made his voice intentionally 
ironical) “to Dunstan.” 

She started, then drooped her eyes to where 
both hands lay in the lap of her simple black 
dress. “Dunstan has treated me very well. We 
have got on together much better than I dreamed 
of expecting.” 

“He’s civil, then? He’s human and civil, 
both? He’s not the arrogant and insolent fellow 
of old?” 

“He’s not in the least what he was. Even 
little Anita has in a measure lost her fear of 
him. . . She’s out walking, just now, with 
Margaret. Poor little Nita! She’s so fond of 
you ! She’ll be inconsolable when I tell her that 
you came.” 

He gave a nod, brief and brusque. “I’m not 
sorry she’s away. How can I be? I came to see 
you — only you.” 

As she answered him, Eloise was smoothing 
composedly one of the black plaits at the front of 
her frock. Between a laugh and a slight frown 
of mock petulance, she said : 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


383 


“Yon tell me so with a sort of military man- 
ner, really! Yon make one feel like a soldier on 
duty.” 

“Does my tone sound over-severe, then, after 
the great amiability of your cousin?” 

“Don’t sneer at Dunstan — pray don’t! It 
seems like quarreling with my good luck. . . 
I confess to you,” she went on, with her lips 
now an anxious curve, “that my to-morrows 
begin to brim with omen.” 

“And why?” 

‘ ‘ Greendingle is virtually sold to those railway 
people. Dunstan will of course live permanently 
in town when there’s no longer a home in River- 
view,” 

“And your aunt?” said Moncrieffe, striving 
to speak very tranquilly, and succeeding. “Has 
she left you dependent on him f” 

“Yo. I have twenty-five hundred a year, or 
thereabouts, from what she saved for me. Dun- 
stan has never shown the least umbrage because 
of her will. ” 

“How gracious of him! Then you’re your 
own mistress, though not in any handsome 
sense.” 

She raised one hand, with contradicting im- 
port. “It’s ample. I can live very comfortably 
on it.” 

“In a boarding-house,” he muttered. 

She laughed faintly. “ Life is a boarding- 
house, for that matter. Oh, I’ve not the faintest 
fear of going into one. I’ll change and change 
till I find one that pleases me. But I want to 


384 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


bring little Nita, too.” Her eves clouded and 
moistened; he saw her lower lip slide, for ah 
instant, beneath its mate. Then, with a slight 
toss of the head and a full though worried smile, 
she continued: 4 ‘But he will not take that poor 
little creature from me! I won’t believe it! At 
least, I won’t believe it till the time comes ! . . . 
There!” she finished, mock-merrily, “that’s my 
only dread on the subject of leaving Green- 
dingle, though of course I shall miss the dear 
old place beyond words!” 

Moncrieffe was slowly passing one hand over 
his forehead. “It’s too bad you can’t feel quite 
confident that Anita will be spared to you,” he 
said. “Might you not ask Dunstan ... or do 
you feel afraid to ask him? . . . whether . . . ?” 

And then, in a sort of whitish mist he saw 
El oise’s face bending over him, and felt her 
hand clutch one of his own, tensely, just between 
wrist and palm. 

“Dr. Moncrieffe! You’re ill! Shall I — ?” 

“No, no.” He lifted his head from the sofa- 
cushion behind him, on which it had fortunately 
fallen. “I’m all right, now. These attacks are a 
souvenir of that hateful fever. Do I look pale?” 

“Yes,” she said, excitedly. “Shan’t I get 
you something? Brandy, or something like 
that? Let me ring — ” 

“Thanks.” He was clasping her hand, and 
its delicate warmth seemed to strengthen him 
strangely, deliciously. Her lips were so near 
his face that he not only could feel their breath 
on his cheek but tell how quick that breath was 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


385 


pulsing. “It’s best for me to take no stimulant; 
you see, a physician knows himself; he can’t 
very well help it. In Venice, even after I’d be- 
gun to sail abroad on the canals, and take long 
strolls, too, 1 would have half a dozen of these 
turns every day. The voyage made me feel 
much stronger, and I really am a cured man. 
But it will be a good year, I suppose, before I’m 
perfectly recovered again.” 

Then he saw how pale his own pallor had ren- 
dered her, and as the beloved face was so very 
near, he touched it with his lips. 

“Eloise, I told you once how I loved you! I 
had no right to tell you then ! Now I can speak 
without fear of wounding you, and with ah, 
such an ardent hope of giving you joy instead 
of pain! For I’ve come here, Eloise, with the 
one chief aim and intent of asking you to be my 
wife!” 

The shrewdest of tacticians in love-making 
could not have lighted on a more opportune mo- 
ment. Eloise had no answer for him in words, 
but her eyes were each a sentence in itself — a 
sweet, luminous epigram of concession, teeming 
with uncontrollable eloquence. 


XXVIII. 


Several more visits had been paid by Mon- 
crieffe to Greendingle before Eloise confessed to 


386 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


him a certain truth. “I could never have con- 
sented to marry you — never, never , 5 ’ she averred, 
“if Aunt Emily had not told me of how you 
came to be Elma Blagdon’s husband.” 

“And she wrote me that she had told you,” 
he answered. “I suppose the knowledge made 
me brave.” 

He had seen Anita, and received a rapturous 
welcome from her, but Dunstan had not yet 
chosen to appear during his visits. “I wish to 
see your cousin,” he said to Eloise. “It is best 
that he should know of our engagement before 
any one else learns of it. You say he is in town 
this morning?” 

“Yes; but by to-morrow I am sure he will 
have returned; for I heard him say that the 
final transfer of the estate would take place to- 
morrow morning, and that he expected quite a 
little crowd of lawyers and railway men to be 
present.” 

“To-morrow, in the afternoon, then,” said 
Moncrieffe, “I shall hope to find him here. Tell 
him so, will you please?” 

Meanwhile Blagdon had grown more and more 
grim of demeanor. Moncrieffe suspected that 
the old man had learned from the coachman who 
had now quite often driven him to Greendingle, 
of how he had really thus often been going 
thither. This knowledge, in whatever way im- 
parted, might explain his father-in-law’s frigid 
bearing. But Moncrieffe determined to speak 
out with entire lack of reserve, judging that 
course wholly the best and kindliest. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


387 


Blagdon always breakfasted earlier than him- 
self, and on the morning of the day which he 
expected would bring him face to face with 
Dunstan, he made a point of meeting the master 
of The Terraces, just as he came indoors from 
one of his habitual strolls. 

“ Good-morning,’ ’ Moncrieffe said, with neu- 
tral civility. 

“Good-morning,” Blagdon almost mumbled, 
while passing onward. 

“Excuse me,” came the deterring voice. “I’d 
like to speak with you for a few minutes. May 
I?” Here Moncrieffe threw open the library 
door, near which he was standing. “In here, 
if you don’t object. You don’t, then? Thanks.” 

He pushed Blagdon politely before him, and 
they were soon confronted in thorough privacy. 
Moncrieffe saw that the old man revealed a rest- 
less disinclination to seat himself. He divined 
that this meant latent belligerence, and treated 
it with seeming unconcern. He chose, on his 
own part, to take one of the big leathern-bot- 
tomed chairs near one of the book-lined walls. 

“Mr. Blagdon,” he began, loiteringly yet not 
at all indolently, “I have now been here at The 
Terraces for quite a while.” 

“So you have ... so you have,” came the an- 
swer, slow and chill. 

“I don’t just know,” pursued Moncrieffe, 
“what your wishes may now be as to my re- 
maining here.” 

“Remaining here, eh?” 

“You’ve been very hospitable, and have shown 


388 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


me much sympathy in regard to my recent ill- 
ness. But of late it has seemed to me that your 
manner has undergone a change.’ ’ 

“A change? Umph! A change? Well, it 
had ought to undergone one. And you know 
why. You know why, and you needn’t try to 
make out you don’t.” 

A slumberous bluster went with this low- keyed 
response, and perceiving the challenge it 
sheathed, Moncrieffe hastened to say: 

“I’ve attempted no real deceit with you.” 

“Oh, you ain’t!” 

“I have not. The first time I went to see Miss 
Thirlwall I told you frankly that this was my 
object. As frankly, now, let me ask you : Has 
it been your desire that I should either see this 
lady not at all or see very little of her?” 

The heavy face had grown one dismal scowl. 
“Poor, dear El ain’t been dead more’n a year.” 

“Quite true. Miss Thirlwall was no enemy 
of hers.” 

“Oh, wcm’t she?” The old man’s mouth 
twisted itself upward, then downward, in ugly 
labial turmoil. “ She used to think you was in 
love with her. ’Twasn’t very much to go there 
once. But to go every day — to set folks saying 
that you’re going to marry her on the money my 
child left ye — why, that’s a horse of another 
color!” 

With cheeks paling and eyes brightening, 
Moncrieffe replied: “Before you and I exchange 
a word on any other subject, let us come to a 
mutual understanding on this one : Why, when 


A MARTYR OP DESTINY. 


389 


I returned from Europe and looked you up, here 
at The Terraces, did you invite me to make this 
place indefinitely my home?” 

“Why — did — I do that?” sullenly drowsed the 
answer. “Why? Why, because I expected you’d 
stay here with me and show her mem’ry the re- 
spect you’d ought to show it.” 

A slight sneer crept between Moncrieffe’s lips, 
but he swiftly repressed it. “You supposed, 
then, ’ ’ he said, roughly, summarily, with a little 
upward wave of one hand, “that I would spend 
years in sorrowful seclusion under the same roof 
with yourself. ’ ’ 

“No,” said Blagdon, firing a little. “I didn’t 
s’pose that of you, though 1 might of some hus- 
bands who’d lost the splendid, noble, brainy, 
beautiful, eddercated wife you lost! I didn’t 
s’pose nor expect it in your case. There’s rea- 
sons why I didn’t; never mind ’em. But I both 
s’posed and expected that you wouldn’t run right 
away after that one girl of all others — the girl 
she was jealous of, and with the best o’ reasons, 
too.” 

“You used the phrase ‘right away,’ ” said 
Moncrieffe, after having let a short silence ensue. 
“It is not ‘right away’ with me, though I admit 
that it is comparatively soon. However, I can’t 
help this. I would wait longer if the sale of the 
Thirl wall estate did not leave Eloise homeless. 
I distrust her cousin, Dunstan, and with what I 
hold to be very logical motives. Eloise’s money, 
left her by her aunt, will support her if she is 
cast adrift, but it will not support her at all to 


390 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


my liking. Hence, having engaged myself to 
marry her — ” 

“To marry her!” cried Blagdon. 

“ — Having engaged myself to marry her, I 
have gained her consent that our wedding shall 
be immediate. I wanted to tell you this before 
I told any one else, and I hope you will both 
comprehend and sanction the course I propose to 
take.” 

His voice nearly failed him as he finished, for 
Blagdon had rushed toward him, with both up- 
lifted hands tight-clenched. 

“You’ll marry her ! You’ll marry that — that 
nobody ! You’ll marry her, too, hardly more’n 
a year after you’ve buried my poor El!” The 
old man gasped for breath, and put one hand 
wanderingly, fumblingly, to his throat. He al- 
most gnashed out the next words ; fury had tem- 
porarily deformed him into a senile gnome of 
malice. “Then, sir, you’ll give back the million 
dollars my girl gave you ! You’ll give it back, 
d’ye hear ! It ain’t going to pay for the mud 
you’d like to throw on the grave o’ the dead!” 

Moncrieffe conquered, though not quite, a 
shudder of disgust. “I will not give back the 
money,” he said. “I once offered to do so, and 
you refused to take it in most decisive terms. I 
will not give it back now ; and your demanding 
that I shall do so is merely mean and cowardly.” 

Choking with rage, Blagdon stuttered: “It’s 
well for you to talk of cowardice ! Bo you s’pose 
I’d have let you keep that money if I’d known 
you meant to play me such a scurvy trick?” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


391 


“’Twas no question of your letting me keep 
the money. I offered to give you what was my 
own before the law. And I’ve played you no 
trick, nor the faintest hint of a trick. I pitied 
your grief, Abijah Blagdon; and in another way 
I now pity your abuse. Both have possibly the 
same origin. But from this hour I’ve done with 
you. It isn’t so much that you have said what 
I cannot in any circumstances pardon. It’s that 
you have said what I could not, if I pardoned it, 
ever forget your having so shamed yourself as to 
imagine and feel. ’ ’ 

He vanished instantly from the room, and s<x 
made prompt preparations to leave the house. 
He had already visited the cottage left him by 
Whitewright, and he determined at once to re- 
pair thither. During his illness in Venice he 
had been struck with the faithful services of a 
French professional nurse who had attended 
him. This man, Pierre, he had brought with 
him to The Terraces. He gave Pierre certain 
orders, and in less than an hour after having 
ended his interview with Blagdon, he had quit- 
ted the home of his father-in-law forever. 

He left behind him, as he well understood, a 
rancorous indignation. He had no knowledge, 
naturally, of Dunstan Thirlwall’s hate, as it 
now burned smoldering and acrid. He was in 
expectation of a meeting that would not be 
fraught with discomfiture as he said to Ann, 
after reaching the cottage : 

“I’ve come to spend the night here, and to ( 
stay for perhaps quite a while. I shall be away 


392 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


all the afternoon. Some luggage of mine will 
arrive in an hour or so, and with it will come 
my servant, whose name is Pierre Traine. He 
will attend to matters, buying this or that in the 
way of immediate necessities and conveniences, 
as you may direct or as he will suggest. You’ll 
find Pierre a very nice fellow, Ann, and I’m 
sure you and he will get along finely together.” 

Meanwhile Dunstan Thirl wall was awaiting 
his cousin’s sweetheart. This proposed marriage 
with Eloise had made his loathing throb like a 
swollen and diseased artery. Here was the man 
who had so successfully shouldered him aside, 
securing the fullest conceivable reward for his 
audacity and triumph. This marriage with 
Eloise was flavored so strongly by the tincture 
of meditated design! To the marriage itself 
Dunstan had not the faintest objection. In- 
deed, he preferred that it should take place, for 
if his vengeance were ever compassed it would 
be the last link in the evidential chain. And 
he was now the prey of a passionate fanaticism. 
He believed the worst, and he was harassed by 
a longing publicly to verify this belief. The 
Archibald case, scanned daily in the newspa- 
pers, kept augmenting his feverish hunger. 
“The fellow shan’t escape me if I’ve got wit 
and will enough to trap him,” passed often, 
nowadays, through his brain. He knew very 
well that he had will enough. As to the wit, 
he felt dubious, in the way that a bloodhound 
might feel, if endowed with human intelligence, 
regarding the surety of his trail. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


393 


That afternoon, when .Dunstan appeared in 
the sitting-room at Greendingle, he crossed its 
threshold some little time before Eloise did — 
and aired, too, a deportment of just that bland 
suavity which he knew, at the needed moment, 
very capably how to assume. 


XXIX 

Monckieffe was not unprepared for a certain 
expression of his courtesy. But this unexpectedly 
warm amplitude of it, discomfited and jarred 
upon him. Still, he remembered Eloise’s good 
report of her cousin’s reformed manners. He 
concluded that he had best take advantage of 
their geniality, whether factitious or the reverse. 
And so, with the least awkward plunge into 
middle things that his mingled serenity and di- 
plomacy would permit, he soon told the entire 
little story of his late betrothal. 

“I suppose Eloise,” he ended, “has made mat- 
ters clear to you before this.” 

“Yes — yes. She has mentioned the affair. I 
don’t know how I can answer better than by 
congratulating you.” And here Dunstan put 
out his hand. 

“It seems to me that there is no reason why 
our marriage should be delayed.” And as Mon- 
crieffe took the proffered hand he momentarily 
pressed it, with more warmth than he had once 
believed himself able, at the sharpest of requisi- 


394 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


tions, to show the man who was its owner. 1 ‘I 
have understood from Eloise that your negotia- 
tions for the sale of Greendingle are now almost 
completed, and in that case a breaking up of the 
old family home must surely follow.” 

“The negotiations of which you speak are now 
entirely completed, ” said Dunstan. “As for your 
marriage with Eloise, it has my full sanction.” 

“Thanks. . . And oh, may I ask, Mr. Thirl- 
wall, if you will permit little Miss Anita to re- 
main, as of old, with her cousin?” 

This was a question which Eloise had feared 
to frame with her own lips. Dunstan’s look 
hardened, for a moment, and his mouth seemed 
to be swept by the shadow of a sneer. Then he 
said, so smilingly and cordially that his watcher 
was tempted to believe this brief change in him 
an illusion — 

“Oh, of course. I would not think of sepa- 
rating Nita from her devoted friend.” 

J ust then Eloise entered the room, her face and 
movements all graceful shyness; and at once 
Dunstan addressed her. 

“We were speaking, Eloise, of Nita remaining 
your companion after you and Dr. Moncrieffe 
are married. I consent gladly to this plan.” 

The rosy color shot into Eloise’s cheeks; but 
embarrassment was whelmed in gratitude. Her 
eyes were sparkling richly as she fixed them on 
Dunstan, 

“Oh, it will be so pleasant 1o keep Nita! I— 
I can’t find words for my thanks!” 

“Nita might naturally prefer Mr. Blagdon’s 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


395 


home to Greendingle, if you should decide to 
bring her there,” said Dunstan, affably. He 
glanced toward Moncrieffe. 

The latter made quick reply. “The Terraces 
and I have parted company for good. I’m at 
present in the cottage poor Magnus Whitewright 
left me. That is to be my home, hereafter, as 
far as Riverview is concerned.” 

Eloise started. “There’s been trouble?” she 
murmured. 

“Yes — there’s been trouble,” said Moncrieffe. 

“About . . . our engagement?” the girl ques- 
tioned. 

“I’ll tell you all some other time,” Moncrieffe 
returned, low of voice. 

“When I’m not here, he means,” Dunstan 
smiled, and the smile had a queer brightness in 
it that repelled both his hearers, they could not 
for their lives have alleged why. 

“Oh, I’ll tell it now,” hastened Moncrieffe, 
with apologetic promptitude. And in another 
minute, as he considered how awkward would be 
the telling of it there and then, Dunstan gave 
his head an amiable toss. 

“Pray defer the telling if you wish, Dr. Mon- 
crieffe,” he said. “For my own part, I’m not 
curious after disagreeable recitals, just now. 
Those two hours or so of dry business this morn- 
ing didn’t put me in the best of humors ; and 
after luncheon I took up a newspaper only to 
find it packed with fresh details about that 
Archibald poisoning case.” 

“What a great excitement it is making,” said 


396 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


Eloise, a little absently. Her mind was busy- 
ing itself with, the most supposable reason for 
this sudden quarrel between Blagdon and his 
son-in-law. 

“The excitement isn’t remarkable,” Dunstan 
seemed to muse aloud. “This man, Archibald, 
was a Brooklyn physician of the very best stand- 
ing. His wife died a lingering death at the age 
of about two-and-thirty. He was in constant 
attendance at her bedside for several weeks. She 
died quite suddenly, one day, and there was no 
suspicion of his having poisoned her — ” 

“Poisoned her!” broke sharply from Mon- 
crieffe. 

“As I was saying,” Dunstan quietly went on, 
“there had been no suspicion of his having ppis- 
oned her until two of her relatives, who had ex- 
pected legacies from her and did not receive 
them, began to collect evidence.” 

“What sort of evidence?” asked Moncrieffe. 

As he spoke, Eloise looked at him sharply. 
She was seated quite near him, and a change in 
his color had caught her heed. She remembered 
those dizzy seizures of which he had told her, 
and one of which she had not long ago witnessed. 

“You’re . . . you’re not quite well?” she 
quickly asked him, half below her breath, lean- 
ing forward. 

“I?” he answered, lightly. “Why, yes. 
What made you think otherwise?” 

Here Dunstan went placidly on. “The evi- 
dence these two angered old ladies got was chiefly 
from servants in the household, one of whom 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


397 


was a hired nurse. It all seemed rather flimsy, 
at first, but Dr. Archibald’s marked attentions 
to a lady with whom he had formerly been on 
intimate terms, gave it rather startling weight. 
Then came his engagement to this lady, inde- 
cently expeditious, it must be owned, whether 
he was innocent or guilty. The exhumation of 
Mrs. Archibald’s body followed, and its stomach 
was found to contain a large quantity of mor- 
phine. . . Will you smoke, Dr. Moncrieffe?” 
And Dunstan held out his silver cigarette-case. 

“ Thanks — no. I — er — I haven ’t smoked since 
my illness. You’ve brought back this Archibald 
matter to my mind. The trial was about to take 
place when I left this country. While abroad I 
remember seeing in an American paper that the 
jury had disagreed as to a verdict.” 

“ And since your return, I suppose,” said Dun- 
stan, with the nicest nonchalance, “you’ve no 
doubt forgotten to observe the chronicling in the 
newspapers of this second trial.” 

Moncrieffe stammered, flushing. “No — I. . . 
Yes — that is, I did glance over an account of the 
new coming trial yesterday. I — I believe it was 
yesterday ; possibly it may have been this morn- 
ing. Oh, yes — on — on second thought I — I find 
it ivas yesterday.” 

With great smoothness Dunstan proceeded: 
“The new trial will probably convict Archibald. 
It will be an affair of great interest for those who 
like such morbid disclosures.” 

“I’m not among that class, ” exclaimed Eloise, 
with a timorous laugh. “I shan’t read a word 


398 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


more of the affair. Thank Heaven” (and she 
stole a glance at her new lover) £< I shall have 
sunnier things to think about.” 

Dunstan had lighted his cigarette. He looked 
at a limber blue coil of smoke poised in the still 
air of the room. “Upon my word y ” he said, 
lazily, “I begin to fancy that you’ve been mak- 
ing sport of me, Dr, Moncrieffe. ” 

“Pray, how is that?” came the flurried answer. 

“Why, you’re quite as well acquainted with 
this whole ugly business as I am, and yet you’ve 
allowed me to narrate it as if you were the most 
uninformed of listeners.” Here Dunstan gave a 
mellow and jocose giggle, stretching himself a 
little in his chair, as though under the drowsy 
spell of the cigarette. 

“You’ve revived the whole unpleasant history 
for me,” said Moncrieffe; and he ended his 
words with a broken laugh, at which Eloise 
again turned toward him, knitting her brows 
puzzledly, “I — er — I must confess that you’ve 
done so with some graphic force.” 

“Force?” draw-led Dunstan, good-humoredly. 
“You make me feel like a newspaper reporter;” 
and he daintily blew another thin smoke- wreath. 
“It’s wonderful how those fellows embellish and 
amplify their ‘stories,’ as I’ve heard that they 
call them. I dare say we’ll have a lot of them 
down here at Riverview when the old cemetery’s 
torn into fragments. ’ ’ 

“Torn into fragments!” Eloise echoed. “Oh, 
I hope it won’t be as bad as that , Dunstan!” 

“No, of course not,” her cousin returned; “but 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


399 


they’re going to take a bigger slice out of the 
northwest side than I had any idea of.” 

Eloise rose alarmedly, clasping both hands 
together. “Oh, Dunstan /” she cried. “You 
don’t mean that anything will happen to our 
plot? — You don’t mean that Aunt Emily — ?” 

“No; no. We' re all right.” As he sp:ke, 
Dunstan looked straight at Moncrieffe, his eye- 
lids narrowing their interspace. “But I’m 
afraid Mr. Blagdon will be very sorry to learn 
that his plot must go. There’s only a single 
grave there, it’s true. But I found out this 
morning, from one of the railway agents, that . . 
m — m . . . your late wife’s coffin must be dis- 
placed.” 

“Displaced!” Eloise shivered aloud. “Oh, 
how dreadful!” 

“This man,” Dunstan went on, “was plainly 
impressed by the fact of Mr. Blagdon ’s great 
wealth, and also by that of a superb and very 
costly marble monument having been lately 
reared to Mrs. Moncrieffe ’s memory. He asked 
me if I thought Mr. Blagdon would be inclined 
to rebel against the desecration, and I answered 
him that I didn’t see how he could very well do 
so. I said to him that the power of the railway 
company was now supreme, and that although 
Mr. Blagdon might come in fora big emolument 
(which no doubt would be to him mournfully 
ridiculous) he could not in any conceivable way 
resist the pressure enforced upon him. His 
daughter’s grave must unquestionably be opened 
and her coffin taken from it. ’ ’ 


400 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


For a few seconds, during the final delivery of 
these placid sentences, Dunstan’s eyes were fixed 
like two dull and steady stars upon the face of 
Moncrieffe. He now saw that face whiten. 
Darting up from his seat, soon afterward, he 
cried: “See, Eloise! Dr. Moncrieffe is ill!” 

But Eloisehad already seen. She sank on her 
knees at Moncrieffe’s side, and caught his hand. 
It was cold, and his head had fallen with oblique 
swerve on a rear abutment, luckily cushioned, of 
the chair in which he sat. It now rested there, 
very peaceably. His eyes were closed. He had 
swooned quite away. 


XXIX. 

“Basil, I’m so glad! You’re better — I can 
see that you are! Your color’s coming back. 
Don’t rise. Just lie here for a little while longer. ” 

Moncrieffe swept floorward with one elbow a 
toppling promontory of pillow, and then gave a 
dorsal push that told him of other pillows not 
easily dislodged. He drew a great sigh, and 
half rose. 

“You’ve put me here on this lounge?” 

“Yes, Basil. It was only a step away from 
the chair in which — ” 

“I fainted. Yes. I see, Eloise. . . And who 
did me this kind service?” 

“Oh, Dunstan and I together moved your 
chair, and then — ” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


401 


“I see, again. You spilled me over into the 
lounge, as it were.” By this time Moncrieffe 
was sitting up and gazing about him. “Where 
is — ?” He paused, and gave his beard one or 
two uneasy hand-strokes. “Where is your 
cousin?” 

“Dunstan? He was here a short time ago. I 
think he will return soon. ’ ’ 

“I — I wasn’t long like this?” 

“My dear Basil, you came to yourself, I 
should say, in about three minutes.” 

“And all these pillows?” he replied, laughing 
bleakly, as he began to rise. “You couldn’t 
have had time — No, I see; they were heaped 
pell-mell on the lounge. I — I remember noticing 
yesterday what a pretty effect they made. . .” 
He spoke loiteringly, wander ingly, while regain- 
ing his feet. “Eloise.” 

“Well, Basil?” 

“I — ” He seized her with mild violence in 
his arms and held her to his breast, kissing her 
brow and cheeks. 

“It was too bad, Basil! I know that trouble 
with Mr. Blagdon helped it. And the trouble 
was about me ! But you must not talk much. 
You must either lie down again here, or let me 
drive with you home — to your new home, I 
mean.” 

“My old one, Eloise. You forget how I lived 
there with Magnus Whitewright before ... be- 
fore I ever set foot within The Terraces. I’ll 
go out now with you. You’ll come along at my 
side for a little distance, won’t you? The walk 


402 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


is only about a mile; you’ll go half of it with 
me, I’m sure.” 

“Basil! You mustn’t dream of walking!” 

“My dear child, I feel as strong as a horse. 
Trust me; I’m quite sure of myself.” 

“But you’re still pale, and you seem excited, 
somehow.” 

“Oh, that will wear off as we stroll on and 
talk to one another. I’ve something . . . some- 
thing I would specially like to tell you.” 

“And you say that so solemnly! Of course I 
know what it is. . . ” On a sudden she clung to 
him, tremblingly. “But, Basil, that attack was 
so horrid ! You must not tax your strength by 
walking!” 

“The air will refresh me, dear. It’s a perfect 
afternoon.” He drew her out into the hall, 
where his hat and a light overcoat were in easy 
reach. “Shall you need a wrap? Ah, here’s a 
jacket, and a hat as well. Let me help you on 
with both. I’ll prove to you how much better 
I am.” 

While he was holding the jacket so that she 
could slip her arms into its sleeves, Eloise flur- 
riedly said: “But ought you not to wait and 
see Dunstan? I am sure he means to return 
soon. I don’t know where he can have gone. 
He left the room just after we both made sure 
that you were really better. You opened your 
eyes, you know, and seemed quite conscious. 
You murmured something in a low voice which 
I could not catch. Possibly Dunstan caught 
it. . . I don’t know. He left the room quite 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


403 


quickly. I thought he had gone for some reviv- 
ing drink — I imagine that he did go with that 
purpose. Do let us wait ! Or shall I try to find 
him, and — ?” 

“No, no, Eloise, Come with me. There will 
be no reviving drink better than this fresh 
evening air and your sweet company.” 

They were soon on the lawn together, walk- 
ing slowly, with her arm inside his own and her 
hand clasping his wrist. 

“You see,” he broke silence, when they were 
well away from the house, “I’m no longer the 
least ill,” 

“But, Basil,” she said, with tremors of anx- 
iety, “it seems to me that your health must still 
be very frail for such attacks as these to affiict 
you,” 

“The other day that vertigo came, as you saw, 
but not so severely. To-day there were rea- 
sons — ” 

“Reasons? Ah, I knew it! Mr. Blagdon’s 
behavior — his indignation, very possibly, at our 
engagement, ’ ’ 

“True, he both shocked and wounded me, 
Eloise. But that whole affair has really cost 
me very little actual distress. I was beyond the 
reach of his wrath, which was absurd, however 
pathetic. Let me tell you just what course this 
foolish old man chose to take.” He then spoke 
at some length, and yet falteringly now and 
then, as though his mind dwelt on other things. 
And suddenly he broke off, devouring Eloise’s 
face with a strange, worried look — 


404 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“Oh, why concern ourselves about this , my 
love, when something far more momentous looms 
up between you and me?” 

“Basil! Something far more momentous? 
Wliat is it? Tell me — tell me.” 

“I will tell you, Eloise,” Moncrieff'e said, very 
gravely. “Your cousin believes that I poisoned 
my wife.” 

“Basil! Basil!” 

“It’s true, Eloise. Blagdon, quite unwit- 
tingly, told me of questions he had asked, I 
never suspected, then. I’m certain now. Dun- 
stan hated me for marrying Elma. He studied 
this Archibald poisoning case, and his vile im- 
pulse of revenge has taken one stealthy and 
sluggish form.” 

“Oh, Basil, Basil, what are you saying!” 

“The truth, my dear Eloise.” 

“But you only suspect--” 

“I feel — I know. Listen: It is true that I, 
like this Dr. Archibald, might be convicted of 
murder.” 

“No — no — no! Basil!” 

“It is true, Eloise.” He laughed, wildly, 
wearily, for a second. “Outrageous fortune!” 
he cried, as if to the glooming trees about him, 
to the empurpled heaven above him. “What 
happened was this. . .” And then he told her 
of the drug he had got from White wright, of 
its failure to bring relief, of his having care- 
lessly left it at Elma’s bedside, of its consump- 
tion by her with evident suicidal motive. After 
that he related how he had spoken his inadver- 


A MARTYR OP DESTINY. 


405 


tent “Thank God” and how Blagdon had heard 
her miserable murmur, “You want me to die.” 

“But your innocence — your complete inno- 
cence!” Eloise protested. “It could not possibly 
go for nothing!” 

“Not with circumstance blackening and 
strangling it? The disruption of this grave- 
yard — of the Blagdon plot there — is to Dunstan 
like a personal providential stroke of aid. He 
has talked with Mr. Blagdon and become con- 
vinced that I kilied my wife. That fainting- 
spell has probably clinched his belief. His next 
step will be to seek my father-in-law and lay 
bare all his suspicions. Of course Blagdon, now 
that he has quarreled with me, will be prone 
to credit Dunstan ? s words. They will horrify 
him, fill him with indignation, and they will 
also penetrate him with a desire to place the 
exhumed body of his daughter under closest 
medical scrutiny.” 

As he ended, Moncrieffe placed his elbow 
against the trunk of a huge yellow-leaved wal- 
nut, and leaned thus with drooped head, his 
posture full of sorriest dejection. 

Eloise, stricken with terror and yet fighting 
against it with distrust born of hope, seized his 
arm and poured upon his downcast face the 
light of her pleading eyes. 

“Oh, Basil, it may turn out this way, but 
still there’s amplest room for doubt ! Dunstan 
is possibly not bent on your ruin in this crafty 
and barbarous way!” 

He met her look. His own was very mourn- 


40G 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


fuL “Eloise, darling, it adds a new pain to my 
sorrow that I should gloom your spirit with these 
grim forebodings!” 

His eyes fixed themselves, now, on the massed 
magnificence of the sunset. The clouds were 
all drenched with a dull splendor: their tints 
had grown lambent, like those in rubies or opals 
when some blaze has bathed them just remotely 
enough not to strike rays from their facets It 
was all a gorgeous pageant of autumnal coin*, 
and yet the muffled sun behind it kept real bril- 
liancy in smoldering abeyance. Here was the 
decay of sunshine rather than its glorious death. 
The tangle of tints while it brightened had be- 
come brooding, baleful, minister; and th ebon 
silhouettes of the fir-trees, etched gainst i took 
elfin contours, like those of leeri g and scowling 
profiles. 

“Look,” he pursued, pointing westward with 
one uplifted hand. “That is the very emblem 
of his sullen and poisonous hate. Oh, you knew 
him of old, Eloise, and so did I, and so (peace 
rest her !) did the lovely mother whose days were 
shortened by his churlish acts. . . But come, 
now. We must part here. You’re with me, my 
love? If not, tell me so in full frankness. I 
shan’t reproach you. Only, there’s this, Eloise : 
if you consent to share my fate it may cost you 
terrible torment,” 

“I would share it, Basil, if it cost me centuries 
of torment.” 

She said this without a touch of what the 
cynics might have called melodrama. She said 


A MARTYF, OF DESTINY, 


407 


it very firmly and simply, and she added, a min* 
nte later : 

“You’re ill, Basil, Send for me to-morrow at 
the cottage, if you don’t feel well enough to come 
to Greendingle. I’ll go there. If it’s found out 
that I’ve gone I shan’t care. Propriety, and all 
that, would be nothing if my presence there 
could give you the least relief.” 

“Eloise!” 

He caught both her hands. His lips were 
trembling as he spoke again, and his eyes burned 
into hers, 

“Why not come there to-morrow, once and for 
all? We could be married with great privacy. 
I could arrange everything and meet you in the 
little church that’s hardly a stone- throw from 
my own dwelling. If I ask too much, dearest, 
tell me so, and there’s an end. If not — ” 

But she receded from him, though her eyes 
were sparkling with tears. 

“So soon — so soon, Basil? Yes, you do ask too 
much !” 

A long, voluminous breeze, the dreamy pre- 
cursor of coming night, . vept flutteredly through 
the daikened treetops. To Moncrieffe it was like 
the scornful yot melancholy echo f his own 
entreaty. To Eloise it shivered wPh omen, 
and seemed an invisible courier of disaster, of 
despair. 


408 ' 


A MARTYR OR DESTINY. 


XXX. 

A few earlier stars had already begun to 
sprinkle the cool autumn heaven in their stealthy, 
bediamonding way. Eloise had reached home. 
She passed through the hall and entered the sit- 
ting-room. No lamps had yet been lighted here, 
but a fire was flickering on the hearth, and the 
walls and ceiling were overdanced by fitful 
shadows. One of these shadows seemed sud- 
denly to resolve itself into a human figure — Dun- 
stan’s. He came forward from a rear part of 
the chamber, doubtless having entered it by an- 
other door. 

In silence they fronted one another. The fire- 
light so flashed upon Dunstan’s face that she 
saw there, in a trice, the now expression which 
clothed it. That completely had Itered. Never, 
in all her past experiences of this man, had she 
seen him wear a more sneering malignity. 

He spoke first. “I saw you leave the lawn 
some time ago with Moncrieffe.” 

“Yes.” 

“He recovered from his fainting-spell rather 
quickly, did he not?” 

“Yes . . . and no sooner had he felt better 
than he wished to go out into the air. But I 
thought you would return, Dunstan, before he 
had time to do so. I imagined that you had 
gone to get some restorative for him.” 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


409 


Up to this moment Eloise believed there was 
still strong chance that Mon crieff e had erred in 
his theory of her cousin’s persecuting hatred. 
But Dunstan’s next words flung all such faith 
to the winds. 

“I went for no purpose of the sort. I went 
because it sickened me to stay in the same room 
with him. Oh, I mean to play open-handedly 
enough, now. I’ve suspected for a long time; 
now I’m certain.” 

Eloise felt her flesh turn icy. “Certain of 
what, Dunstan?” she managed, 

“That he poisoned his wife.” 

In the silence that followed this torturing 
phrase Eloise turned and stared into the crack- 
ling and volatile Hre. Its flame seemed to gibber 
at her with countless little spiteful upthrust 
tongues. 

“If he has done this damnable thing,” she 
heard Dunstan’s voice ring coldly on, “he can’t 
escape a public trial for it any more than Archi- 
bald, of whose present predicament he tried 
blunderingly to show himself ignorant. He can 
fly anywhere he pleases, but the law, in these 
days of telegraphs and bloodhound detectives, 
will drag him back. Even without the exhum- 
ing of his wife’s body and the examination of 
certain viscera, evidence of great convicting 
strength could be brought against him. He 
undoubtedly knew of Elma’s will, leaving him 
a million dollars. She herself kept repeating to 
him in piteous tones that he wanted her to die. 
He forgot himself, one^day, just before her 


410 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


death, in speaking to her father.. ‘This is al- 
most the end,’ he said, ‘and thank God for it P 
Fine words, truly, from a husband whose wife 
lay dying a few yards away ! That he had been 
giving her morphine too, is beyond a shadow of 
doubt. He told his father-in-law that he was 
doing so, and with feeble results. Feeble re- 
sults, indeed ! The very lameness of this story 
would turn half the medical world against 
him. . . . And now, at last, when I sprung 
my trap on him, you yourself saw how hor- 
ror threw him into cowardly collapse. He 
kndws that the proof of his guilt lies there 
in that grave. It was exploding a bombshell 
to him, in his fancied security, when I stated 
that the Blagdon plot must go, and her grave 
be opened.” 

Elofse stood staring into the fire, perfectly 
motionless, as before. Then it flashed through 
her mind that this very inertia might seem hurt- 
ful to the cause of the man whose innocence she, 
of all others, ought most firmly to defend. She 
turned, the next instant, and re-surveyed Dun- 
s tan’s firelit face. 

“Everything you say,” she answered, “is to 
me ridiculous.” 

“Ridiculous, eh?” he scoffed. 

“In its improbability— yes. Butin its cruelty 
and malice, hideous. You hate him, and you 
have shown your hate like the worst of cowards. 
Your kindlier bearing toward me, after your 
mother died, is explained, now. One hate 
eclipsed the other; you forgot to treat me un- 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


411 


civilly, so bent had you become on trying to 
ruin a man who never in the least wronged 
you.” 

She saw his face twitch and grow bloodless in 
the glamourous light. 4 ‘I don’t know what you 
call wronging me. However, my motive is not 
one of revenge. I am acting in the name of pure 
justice.” 

“As if I believed that, Dunstan Thirlwall!” 
she cried. “As if any one who knew you could 
believe it!” She had never spoken to him before 
in this untrammelled way; her daring was the 
daring of desperation. “Your motive has been 
revenge, and you do not speak the truth when 
you say that you have been urged by any other. 
You wished to marry Elma Blagdon for the 
worldliest of worldly reasons. You were fierce 
in your resentment against Basil Moncrieffe 
because you thought that he had deliberately 
shouldered you aside and married the woman 
whom your ambition and avarice had singled 
out. But Elma Blagdon would never have mar- 
ried you. She would never have married any 
one except him. And in her imperious way 
she— she almost dragged him into an engage- 
ment w* :h her. Basil went to her father’s house 
on the night of that engagement without the 
faintest expectation that it would occur. You 
know what the woman was. He knew also— 
everybody in Riverview had long known. 
Basil, like most men, was human— fallibly so, 
if you please. Elma, beyond doubt, was de- 
termined to make him her husband. She sue- 


412 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


ceeded, though he married her without the desire 
of personal advancement, profit, gain!” 

“I see. I see perfectly. This is the story that 
he has told you. He has told it, after he has be- 
come a widower with a million dollars, in order 
to smooth over the fact of his having jilted you 
a year or so ago.” 

“That,” gasped Eloise, “is utterly and shame- 
lessly false. Basil had never asked me to marry 
him. He had never spoken to me a single lov- 
ing word. His betrothal to Elma Blagdon did 
not mean the vaguest treachery to myself. I told 
you this before, and I tell it you again. I cast 
back the lie — ” 

“Be careful, Eloise!” He came closer to her; 
his face was now more shadowed, but still dis- 
tinct. 

“Those are just the words you spoke to me 
that evening when your mother still lived, and 
as I defied you then, with her lovely sympathy 
and support behind me, so I defy you now when 
I am bereft of both. Yes, Dunstan, I cast back 
the lie in your face then, as I cast it back now. 
You soiled yourself grossly as a gentleman when 
you presumed to tell me that Basil Moncrieffe 
had thrown me over, had tossed me aside like 
an old glove. Those were your words, and I re- 
member them, as we remember things that were 
far better forgotten with disdain.” 

He came still nearer to her, and the altering 
glow on his face gave her the dread (as it had 
once given her, months before, beneath this same 
roof) that he might strike her with his hand. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


413 


But he chose to strike her with his tongue, 
instead — and tellingly, in a way that his fixed 
certainty of her lover’s guilt made him sure 
would sting and ache. 

“All you’ve said about Moncrieffe’s reluctance 
to engage himself to Miss Blagdon — about Elma’s 
having almost dragged him into an engage- 
ment with her — will serve as excellent evidence 
at the coming trial. ’ ’ 

She drew haughtily backward, though the 
poor, fear-smitten heart was sinking in her 
bosom. 

“Sometimes those French novels that you’re 
so fond of contain a certain word — blague. I 
can’t help telling you that I’m rather strongly 
reminded of it by your pompous and threatening 
talk.” 

“Of course you defend him,” came the an- 
swering sneer, after a slight silence during 
which she watched the knot in his throat rise 
and fall, as though he were literally choking 
down the rage she had roused. “Of course 
you do. He’s consented to marry you at last — 
you, a bastard!” 

The fiery tears sprang to her eyes, but she said 
nothing. 

“He’s consented to give you a name, and God 
knows you needed one, badly enough. Your 
father hadn’t the decency to do it—” 

“But your mother had,” she shot in, “and you 
were too base and sordid to honor her for it ! 
You’ve called me by that name for the first time 
in your life, Dunstan, though more than once 


414 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


you’ve hinted that you wanted to call me by it. 
Well, perhaps you’re right. But when I think 
of the sweet and noble life — your mother’s life — 
that you grieved and wounded with your blood- 
less ingratitude and selfishness, I can’t help feel- 
ing that her spirit, if it could look on us both 
now, would claim me as her true child and re- 
ject you as her false — unnatural as you’ve al- 
ways been, unfeeling, watching for her death, 
and glad of the gain that you got from it.” 

He slipped close to her side as she ended these 
words. She heard a loud sigh of exasperation 
gush from his lips. His face was in dense 
shadow, now ; the firelight had faded into a few 
yellow flickerings and flutters. For a moment 
she waited, thinking what he might do and feel- 
ing her own powerlessness. Then she heard his 
voice ring out in strident irony as he passed be- 
yond her. 

“I’ll see, if I can, that you make a very bril- 
liant marriage. You’ll get a celebrated husband, 
unless I’m devilishly in error. ‘Mrs. Murderer 
Moncrieffe’ will look well on your visiting cards. 
Perhaps it will please you more than ‘Miss Bas- 
tard Thirl wall.’ ” 

In a few more minutes Eloise realized that sae 
was alone. Her heart seemed to bound in her 
breast; something had begun to throb at the 
roots of her tongue, and her lips felt burningly 
dry. 

“Shall I stay here another night?” whirled 
through her thought. . . Then she crouched be- 
fore the fire and shivered there in the darkness. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


415 


“ Where can I go until to-morrow?” she moaned 
aloud, not knowing that the words had escaped 
her. 

“Miss Eloise.” 

She rose, a little giddily, to her feet. “It’s 
you, Margaret?” 

“Yes, miss.” 

She caught the strong arms of Anita’s nurse. 
It was so good to feel something both strong and 
friendly at such a moment. 

“Oh, Margaret, I’m glad you came and found 
me here ! I — I wanted you. Perhaps you heard — 
But never mind that. Margaret, when I’m 
calmer I’m going to write Dr. Moncrieffe a let- 
ter. Will you promise that it shall be safely 
delivered him?” 

“Yes, Miss Eloise. You can trust me. I’ll 
have it sent.” 

“Not to Mr. Blagdon’s, though — not to The 
Terraces.” And then she gave full further ex- 
planations and directions. . . “Now come with 
me to my room. Let me put my arm in yours — 
like that, Margaret. We’ll go upstairs together. 
And — and afterward I’ve something else to say 
to you. The letter must go first, though, if I 
can only write it . . if I can only write it!” 

“Oh, you can, miss, you can,” comforted Mar- 
garet, who was fondly attached to her, and who 
had rejoiced at her betrothal almost as keenly 
as she had sorrowed at the death of her aunt. 
“When we get upstairs I’ll bathe your head — 
oh, how hot it is! . . And I’ll rub your hands 
. — oh, mercy, how cold they are! ...” 


416 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


But they were not so cold that Eloise failed, 
in the next few minutes, to write Moncrieffe. 
One sentence of her letter ran thus : 

“Precisely at noon to-morrow I will meet you 
in the church you named, and will there become 
your wife.” 


XXXI. 

After she had made sure that her letter was 
on its way, Eloise began to dread from Dunstan 
some fresh offensive sign. But none came. 
Margaret brought little Anita to her, and she 
pretended that a doleful headache kept her from 
dinner. Anita looked incredulous, for her cousin 
was not given to headaches; and no amount of 
diplomatic persuasion could induce her to sit 
alone at the table with her brother. “Good 
Heavens!” thought Eloise, while Margaret, a 
little later, served them with viands it almost 
nauseated her to look at, but of which she 
feigned, because Anita was present, to partake : 
“what agony may the poor little thing endure 
when she realizes that I am gone from her for- 
ever! And must this happen? Who knows if 
it may not? What cold-blooded act would be 
foreign to a nature like Dunstan’s?” . . . 

Later, after Anita had been put to bed by her 
sedulous nurse, Eloise resolved on a certain 
course. She knew that Margaret would come 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


417 


to her room before she retired for the night, and 
in this expectation she did not err. 

“You see,” she said, with a little half- ex- 
hausted upward wave of both hands, when 
Margaret had appeared. 

“Miss Eloise ! You’re packing ! ” And then 
the faithful elderly creature broke into tears. 

“Margaret,” said Eloise, taking her hand, “I 
must go to-morrow, and these two small trunks 
which were among the luggage aunt and I had 
with us on our Southern trip chanced to be close 
at hand. So I filled them with a few things I 
chiefly cared to take away. But, Margaret, 
there are some clothes I want you to pack for 
me and send. I want them sent to . . to Dr. 
Moncrieffe’s new home — or, rather, his old one. 
You know, Margaret. It’s where you had my 
letter sent this evening.” 

The woman’s face paled with consternation; 
and seeing this, Eloise gave a sad, wild little 
laugh. 

“That’s to be my home, Margaret. I’m going 
to marry Dr. Moncrieffe to-morrow, in the little 
village church near his cottage. ” She spoke on, 
for some time, to her astonished listener, and 
then finally said: “Oh, Margaret, if you could 
bring Anita to me during the afternoon! We 
shan’t go on any wedding- tour; for a good 
while, I imagine, the cottage will be our home. 
There are reasons why Dr. Moncrieffe should re- 
main just here in River view for some time yet. 
A great trouble may come upon him, as I’ve 
just told you; I marry him in this way because 


418 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


of this fact. Our wedding will be private, but 
the news of it shall at once be published every- 
where. . . And now, Margaret, I — I’ve a great 
favor to ask of you.” 

“Yes, miss? I’d do ’most anything for you, 
Miss Eloise, and I guess you know it,” 

“Thanks, Margaret. I want you to bring 
Miss Anita to the cottage to-morrow afternoon 
at about one o’clock. It will be just as if you 
were taking her out for a walk, you know. 
Bring her there, and I mean to keep her there 
if I can. Of course, if Mr. Thirlwall claims 
her, insists on her coming back, I can do noth- 
ing. But that will be no affair of yours. You’ll 
just bring her to me — to us; will you do this 
for me, Margaret?” 

“Yes, miss.” 

“Thanks — thanks!... And as for these 
traps, you may send them to the cottage any 
time during the afternoon — these and others, 
any others that you may be sure of as really 
my possessions. You know the two or three 
trunks that actually belong to me, and you 
know all my clothes. Those jewels that Aunt 
Emily left me in her will I shall take on my 
own person. Then, Margaret, if you will come 
yourself to the cottage by evening, or later, you 
can stay with me — with Miss Anita and me — 
and be to us there just as good and affectionate 
a servant and companion as you have always 
been to us here. But first of all try to bring 
me Miss Anita. Let that be your one chief, 
ruling motive after I’ve gone.” . . . 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


419 


The next morning dawned clear, cool and 
brilliant. Eloise had passed a night half of 
insomnia, half of torturing dreams, Margaret 
brought breakfast upstairs to her. j^.nita ap- 
peared, with bothering questions about her head- 
ache. The hours dragged terribly. Ten o’clock 
came, and she learned that Dunstan had ordered 
a horse and wagon from the stables. By half- 
past ten she also learned, with a pang of mixed 
joy and dread, that he had driven away from 
Greendingle. 

“He has gone,” she told herself, “to talk with 
Mr. Blagdon. Well, let him go.” 

The coast was quite clear, now. She left the 
house, a little while afterward, with quite her 
usual air and attire. Margaret had managed, 
meanwhile, to amuse and detain Anita in one 
of the upper rooms. 

“Good-by, dear old Greendingle!” Eloise 
murmured half aloud, as she paused on the 
lawn for a moment. Then she asked herself 
if ever to any girl, in all the stories that she 
had read or heard, had befallen an austerer 
wedding-morning. 

And yet . . the sun shone brightly, the crisp 
air was vigor and stimulus in every breath of 
it, the bridegroom that she loved awaited her 
scarcely a mile away. 

Just beyond the portals of the plain little 
church she found that he indeed awaited her, 
and with quiet yet intense raptures of wel- 
come. 

The short and simple ceremony soon made 


420 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


them man and wife. When it was over Eloise 
said to her husband : 

“Stay here, and give those instructions to 
your witnesses about the full and wide publica- 
tion of the wedding.” 

She herself went alone to the cottage, meeting 
old Ann there, who had heard the truth and held 
ready for her a big bouquet of asters, culled 
from the autumn garden. 

Moncrieffe soon joined her. “What an anx- 
ious bride!” he said, kissing her on the lips. 
They had met in the room hallowed by memories 
of Magnus Whitewright. A big blaze of logs 
cheerily sputtered on the hearth. “Oh, my 
darling,” he went on, “if by marrying you I 
could only feel that you have accepted nothing 
from me but happiness!” 

“It’s priceless happiness, Basil,” she mur- 
mured, “to feel that I have now the right to 
share with you this horrible persecution, which 
is imminent, unavoidable.” 

“Eloise! - Your letter hinted of something. 
Tell it me in full.” 

She spoke with complete unreserve of what 
had passed on the previous night. When she 
had finished, Moncrieffe drew a great sigh, while 
his gaze wandered drearily about the room. 

“Was I not sure? And you doubted. But I 
felt that man’s hate of me; I felt his thirst, 
silly yet terrible, for a vengeance over which he 
had pondered and brooded. — Ah,” he broke off, 
“my old desk! Blagdon no doubt had it sent 
here this morning while I was away.” 


A MARTYR OP DESTINY, 


421 


They both went and stood by the desk — an 
old-fashioned and valueless affair enough — while 
Moncrieffe opened it with one of the keys he 
always carried on his person, 

“I had it taken from here when I — ” He 
stopped short, 

4 ‘When you married Elma Blagdon,” she 
supplied, 

“Yes.” 

“And now her father has returned it to you?” 

“Yes, It’s a queer memento, Eloise, of my 
queer and recent past. See; the pigeon-holes 
are full of incongruous driftings.” He drew 
forth paper after paper. “A letter from youi 
dear aunt, . . My first prescription as a full- 
fledged physician ; I made a copy of it for senti- 
mental reasons , . . An undergraduate essay on 
the Structure of the Human Heart which I sent 
to a medical review in serene confidence, and got 
back again in scornful surprise. . . A few affec- 
tionate lines from dear old Magnus. . . Well, T 
wonder if he sees us now, Eloise?” And Mon- 
crieffe turned, pressing her to his breast 

“I am certain of it, Basil!” 

“Then I am certain that he is glad! Still, a 
sense of my own selfishness weighs on me with 
fearful force!” 

“Selfishness! Oh, Basil, you shall not speak 
like that!” She laid he - head sideways against 
his heart, as though listening 4 o the strokes it 
made, “What you call selfishness I call the 
largest and richest generosity.” 

“Generosity!” 


422 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“Oh, I’m not speaking of my former name- 
lessness — of my now owning a real name (think 
of it!) for the first time in my life. And I’m not 
speaking of the money you tell me you’re now 
master over. Neither seems of the faintest im- 
port to me, Basil, beside tho title of being simply 
your wife — beside the wealth of simply owning 
your love!” 

“To tell how thankful that answer makes me, 
Eloise, I should speak to your naked soul, dear- 
est, with the lips of mine! Yet, ah, can I forget 
that in marrying me you have perhaps dedicated 
days and days of your future to grief and pain?” 

“Do not you forget, Basil?” she replied, 
“Whether I had become your wife or no, would 
not my sufferings have been the same?” 

“True,” he smiled. Then, with the smile 
souring into a sneer, darkening into a frown, he 
went on: “What puppets we all are!— what 
puppets!” 

“No, no,” she dissented. “1 hate to hear you 
speak in so hopeless a strain!” 

“Eloise, Eloise!” he cried, “how can I speak 
in any other? What has my whole life been 
but one futile struggle against the ironies and 
persecutions of destiny? In earlier manhood I 
was eager for honorable distinction, and anxious 
to gain it by sincere, unflagging effort. I longed 
for friendship of the truer, finer sort, and found 
this in Magnus Whitewright, a man of rarest 
endowments and noblest character. Scarcely 
had I grown to love and honor him when I was 
called upon to witness his physical decadence— 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


423 


slow but inevitably certain. It tortured me to 
feel that he must die, but when I met you my 
distress was alleviated. I loved you, and in an 
opposite, unpassionate way I loved your adora- 
ble aunt. Her friendship would have repaid me 
for the loss of Magnus. To those who honestly 
realize what perfect friendship means it is not 
so much a question of sex as of sympathy. I 
loved Emily Thirl wall in the same way that I 
had loved Magnus. If I could have changed her 
to a man, him to a woman, it would have made 
no material difference. Both were sources to 
me of the sweetest and deepest enjo}unent. Both 
were doomed; both perished. But while I was 
forced to see the inexorable darkness threatening 
each — and to se8 it all the more keenly because 
of my professional training: as a physician — I 
held myself anchored in spirit to the sweet surety 
of your love. You know now of the letter that 
1 wrote you on the night when I was sent for 
at The Terraces, I went there with that letter 
next my heart.. What happened there you al- 
ready know. A fierce and unmerciful suasion 
wrought itself upon me. I yielded — but was it 
I that really yielded? Was it not an inferior, 
semi-dormant energy within me, tremendously 
tempted, and winning its power of overthrow 
through the impetus of that same tempting 
stress? Well, well, here is a question for the 
psychologist I am none ; I am only a common- 
place country doctor, Eloise, who loved one 
woman with his heart, and cared for another 
with his senses, . . Then came my marriage 


424 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


with Elma. I had turned down a certain page 
in the book of my life. ‘ I will be loyal to her, ’ 
I said; ‘I will strive to forget, and I will hon- 
orably and honoringly remember. Folk will 
prattle; let them. Folk will say that I mar- 
ried only for money — I, who have never been 
disturbed by a single longing after excessive 
wealth; let them. Folk will call me a suc- 
cessful fortune-hunter; let them. I have mar- 
ried a woman who will require from me vital 
verification of the promises I gave her at the 
altar; these promises I will study to fulfill. 
To have missed the greater happiness need not 
mean with me to ignore the finer duty. I will 
be true to myself, though the heavens fall.’ . . 
Thus I meditated, Eloise, thus I resolved!” 

“And it was noble and brave of you, Basil, so 
to meditate, so to resolve!” 

“Ah, perhaps . . . perhaps! But the heavens 
did fall — there was my horrible trouble — there, 
again, was the bloodhound enmity of ‘outrageous 
fortune’! . . . What did my marriage prove? I 
have told you.” 

“You have told me, Basil, and I have shud- 
dered at the miseries you underwent. But still” 
— and here Eloise lifted to him eyes brimming 
with lo ve, tenderness and devotion — “you under- 
went them with a courage and fortitude that 
make me treasure you all the more! ” 

“I don’t deserve one word of praise,” he said, 
in solemn and self-convinced undertone. “But 
it still is surpassingly pleasant, Eloise, from your 
lips! . . . Well, then, at last my release came. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


425 


You understand? At last I was freed from that 
frightful enslavement. ’ ’ 

“Yes, Basil, I understand.” 

He raised both hands, letting them slowly 
drop at his sides, while a look of agony flashed 
and faded on his fatigued face. 

“Hero I stand, now, Eloise,” he broke forth, 
with sarcasm and sorrow mingling in his voice, 
“before an odious peril, unsolicited and unde- 
served. Elma’s body, when taken from its 
grave, even ' it does not deal me a shameful 
death, will doubtless damn my good name for- 
ever! And yet people talk of our succeeding 
because we try severely — of our accomplishing 
because we honestly and earnestly intend ! Look 
at my life. Look at its struggles, and then at 
its defeat. Is the last a natural sequel of the 
first? Is not my defeat a melancholy mockery 
of my struggles? And if one calls this elusive 
element of disaster by its true name, one is 
frowned down as a pessimist — tedious and 
threadbare term! The truth is, those words, 
‘pessimism’ and ‘optimism,’ should be stricken 
from our dictionaries, Eloise. Every man of 
commonly lucid judgment is an intermingling 
of both. Who but some cachinnating idiot 
would dare to say that life is all joy? Who but 
some absurd hypochondriac would dare to say it 
is ell gloom? But ah, the wise man knows that 
its mystery of brightness and darkness is one 
eternal challenge to will, purpose, effort, energy, 
no matter how bravely or how morally each is 
exploited and applied!” 


426 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


Just then a voice in the outside hall was heard, 
calling Eloise’s name. 

“It’s Nita!” she cried. “Margaret has 
brought her to me!” 

Anita’s welcome of Moncrieffe was scarcely 
less ardent than that which she bestowed on 
Eloise. She prattled along incessantly while 
seated on the knee of her new cousin. She ap- 
peared thoroughly to comprehend the fact that 
she was in the presence of a bride and groom, 
and she honored the whole idea of the marriage 
with her gracious approval. 

“Still,” she objected, “I don’t see why you 
didn’t let Cousin Eloise wear a veil and a wreath. 
Don’t all brides wear veils and wreaths? Per- 
haps she did, though, and has taken ’em off. 
No? She didn’t? Well, I don’t see why. And 
am I to stay here, now?” 

“I hope so, Nita,” said Moncrieffe. 

“You hope so?” she retorted, the child laps- 
ing strangely into the woman, as often happened 
with her. “Hoping isn’t knowing, if you 
please.” 

“You’re right, there, Nita.” . . Moncrieffe 
looked forlornly at his wife. 

“Why do you look at Cousin Eloise like that?” 
queried the keen little voice. “Now, see here 
— see here, both of you ! I won’t go back to him 
alone ! I won’t go back unless you go, Cousin 
Eloise! I — I hate him, and I — I’d die if I had 
to live there without you!” 

Then a paroxysm of infantile tears became om- 
inous, and Eloise hurried to obstruct it by com- 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


427 


forting phrases, many of which filled her with 
a repentant feeling as to their possible falsity. 
When Anita’s anxieties had been assuaged, and 
after she had climbed into a chair near Mon- 
crieffe’s newly-arrived desk, and begun to busy 
herself by thrusting her frail little hands into 
its pigeonholes and other compartments, Eloise 
murmured to her husband : 

“Will he insist on reclaiming her, do you 
think?” 

“No,” came the thoughtful answer. “Why 
should he, after all? His father’s will makes 
him her guardian, does it not?” 

“Yes.” 

“And gives her nothing in her own right?” 

“No. There is simply a requisition that he 
shall shield her and treat her well. He has 
absolute ownership, now that his mother is 
dead.” 

“Very well. He will not then concern him- 
self with her disappearance from Greendingle. ” 

“But his malicious impulses — ” 

“Will be counteracted by his relief at being 
rid of her. Trust me ; I am right here. He has 
always disliked and avoided her, as we both 
know. Otherwise she, poor little thing, would 
not so avoid and fear him now.” . . A deep, 
low sigh broke from Moncrieffe, while his hand 
stole into Eloise’s. “Ah, my dear, you may 
have bitter troubles to face, but that, I am con- 
fident, will not be among them!” 

A queer little cry just then sounded from the 
elfish rummager ensconced before the desk. 


428 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


“How funny! Here’s a letter that hasn’t 
been opened!” 

“My life,” said Moncrieffe, “seems blacker 
with threat the more I muse upon if, Eloise.” 

“Don’t muse upon it, then!” pleaded his 
wife. “Let me help you to trust in the un- 
expected. They say, Basil, that it always hap- 
pens.” 

“A letter that’s never been opened! Look!” 
And Anita flung herself round in her chair 
with a square white envelope uplifted triumph- 
antly^ 

“What are you saying, my dear?” broke ab- 
sently from Moncrieffe, who had heard her first 
words yet failed to heed them. 

‘ ‘ I found it there in that little drawer, ’ 5 said 
Anita. Then the woman’s drollery pushed 
through the child’s innocence. “I hope it’s 
got money in it! If it has, half’s mine! I 
can set up a claim to half; can’t I, Cousin 
Eloise?” . . . 

“Good God!” 

Moncrieffe had risen, taken the letter, and 
glanced at its outside writing. Self-reproach, 
and possibly self-contempt as well, were in the 
look he now gave Eloise. 

“What is it?” she questioned quickly. “A 
letter you’d forgotten to open, Basil?” 

“Forgotten — and culpably! It’s from Magnus 
White wright. ” 

“Magnus White wright! A dead man, Basil?” 
This fluttered from Eloise, while her cheeks 
whitened. 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


429 


“The very night that he died Magnus wrote 
me a note accompanying this letter. He be- 
sought me not to open the envelope I’m now 
holding in my hand until three months had 
elapsed from the time of its receipt. Three 
months! Oh, Eloise, it has lain forgotten in 
that drawer for Heaven knows how long ! And 
what sacred message, request, en joinder may he 
not have sent me?” 

With moistening eyes Moncrieffe sank into a 
seat. Eloise glided behind him and leaned her 
head over his shoulder. This is what they read 
together : 


“October — , 188-. Midnight. 

“My dear Basil— You know that I am quite 
without fear of death, but the feeling that I may 
soon pass away with great suddenness has now 
become deeply impressed upon me. And there- 
fore, in this letter which I shall trust implicitly 
that you will not open till three months after 
receiving it, I am impelled to make you a cer- 
tain confession. By the time that you do open 
it, your wife will probably have ceased to live. 
By that time, too, you may have discovered the 
deception which I have used. But though at 
first you may feel indignant, dear Basil, I am 
certain that a little quiet reflection will convince 
you of the loving motive which has swayed me. 
The bottle of so-called morphine which I gave 
you to-night was a decoction invented by myself, 
and the odor and hue of pure morphine which it 
may have seemed to possess was entirely a re- 
sult of mild dilution and harmless coloring mat- 
ter. Hyoscyamus and Bromide of Sodium were 
the two soporific ingredients, and these were 
both employed with discreetest care. . . And 


430 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


now, my dear Basil, should come the self-exten- 
uating cause for my deceptive act. I have al- 
ways loved you and honored you and believed 
in you; and yet I could not help feeling to- 
night, as you came to me in your weariness and 
despondency, that this same ‘outrageous fortune’ 
of which you and I have more than once talked 
together, might gain a hold upon you, destruc- 
tive of will, rectitude, self-respect. ‘Might,’ I 
say, dear Basil, and it is because of my love that 
I dare to write you of my fear. It was this fear, 
springing from the richest affection, that made 
me act as I have done. If I am dead when these 
lines reach you, I know you will pardon and 
understand. If I still live and she has died, it 
may be different; but I will face, in that event, 
your indignation, and we will ‘have it out to- 
gether,’ Basil, in belligerent earnest. If I am 
dead and she has survived, I shall still be sure 
of your leniency. But in any case I now beseech 
you to look on me as 

“Your inalienable well-wisher, 

“Magnus.” 

Eloise and Moncrieffe finished this mightily 
important letter at almost one and the same mo- 
ment. 

She slipped round his chair and sank at his 
feet. Their eyes were riveted to one another’s, 
in a gaze of immeasurable joy and relief. 

“Basil!” cried Eloise. “It is vindication, 
salvation! Dunstan will be powerless, now!” 

Anita came trotting up to them. “Cousin 
Eloise, why do you do that? Has Dr. Mon- 
crieffe been cross to you, and are you asking him 
to forgive you?” 

Eloise, still kneeling, drew the fragile little 


A MARTYR OF DESTINY. 


431 


shape close to her side. But her look did not 
leave Moncrieffe ’s as she murmured: 

“No, darling, fortune has been cross to both 
of us, but it has grown kind again, and I am 
asking Dr. Moncrieffe (your Cousin Basil, now, 
you know) to forgive fortune, and not to call it 
so very ‘outrageous’ any more.” 

“Fortune? fortune?” said Anita, not liking 
this vague answer, and yet seeing on the faces 
of her two friends a look that was happy enough 
to rally and accentuate her precarious good- 
humor. “What do you mean by ‘fortune’? Is 
it anything like — like the good fairies in the 
stories that you and Margaret tell me?” 

Moncrieffe had clasped Eloise’s hand with one 
of his own. But he reached out the other and 
let it drop fondlingly on Anita’s head. 

“Yes, my dear,” he answered. “It is like one 
of those same good fairies, and to-day it has 
taken your sha<pe. Though we were married 
without you this morning, Nita, you have still 
been our bridesmaid, and the luckiest and most 
blessed bridesmaid any wedded pair has ever 
known!” 


THE END. 


/\ IV1 £3 \/ Ej3[ ! 13 §*\ g** that have ceased to chirp 

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health, comfort and hygiene of CAGE BIRDS. It is made after the 
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Mailed to any P. O. in the U. S. or Canada for 15 cts., by the Bird Fooi^ 
Co., 400 N. 3d St„ Philadelphia, Pa. Bird Book free. 


You Needn’t Look 

immediately for the damage 
that dangerous washing com< 
pounds do. It’s there, and it’s 
going on all the time, but you 
. won’t see its effects, probably, 
\ for several months. It wouldn’t 
do, you know, to have them 
too dangerous. 

The best way is to take no risk. 
You needn’t worry about damage to 
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first made and fully proved. What can you gain 
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Beware of imitations. 840 JAMES PYLE, N, Y* 




Carl L. J essen’s Crystal Pepsin Tablets will cure Dyspepsia and wilt pro* 
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by mail for 50c. in stamps. Carl L. Jensen Co.,^ *00 North 


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FREE 


432 ) 


BURNETT 

- - - AT THE - - - 

CHICAGO EXPOSITION 


WHAT THE RESTAURATEURS AND CATERERS WHO ARE TO FEED 
THE PEOPLE INSIDE THE FAIR GROUNDS THINK OF 


BURNETT’S EXTRACTS: 


Chicago, April 2d, 1893. 
Messrs. Joseph Burnett & Co. 

Gentlemen : After careful tests and Inves- 
tigation of the merits of your flavoring ex- 
tracts, we have decided to give you the 
entire order for our use, in our working 
department as well as in all our creams and 
ices, used in all of our restaurants in the 
buildings of the World’s Columbian Ex- 
position at Jackson Park. 

Very truly yours, 
WELLINGTON CATERING CO. 

By Albert S. Gage, President. 


Chicago, April 26th, 1893 
Messrs. Joseph Burnett & Co., 

Boston and Chicago. 

Gentlemen : After careful investigation we 
have decided that Burnett’s Flavoring Ex- 
tracts are the best. We shall use them ex- 
clusively in the cakes, ice creams and 
pastries served in Banquet Hall and at New 
England Clam Bake In the World’s Fair 
Grounds. 

N. E. WOOD, Manager, 

New England Clam Bake Building. 

F. K. MCDONALD, Manager, 

Banquet Hall. 


Woman’s Building, ) 

World’s Columbian Exposition, j 
Chicago, April 21st, 1893. 
Messrs. Joseph Burnett & Co.. 

Boston and Chicago. 

Gentlemen: We take pleasure in stating 
that Burnett’s Flavoring Extracts will 
be used exclusively in the Garden Cafe, 
Woman’s Building, World’s Columbian Ex- 
position, during the period of the World’s 
Fair. 

RILEY & LAWFORD. 


Columbia Casino Co. 
Messrs. Joseph Burnett & Co., 

Boston and Chicago. 

Gentlemen: We take pleasure in stating 
that Burnett’s Flavoring Extracts will be 
used exclusively in the cuisine of the 
Columbia Casino Restaurant, at the 
World’s Fair Grounds, as it is our aim to 
use nothing but the best. Respectfully, 

H. A. WINTER, Manager. 


Transportation Building, ) 
Vorld’s Columbian Exposition. \ 
Chicago, April 24, 1893. 
Messrs. Joseph Burnett & Co. 

Gents: After careful tests and compari- 
sons we have decided to use “ Burnett’s 
Extracts” exclusively in our ice creams, 
ices and pastry. Very respectfully, 

SCHARPS & KAHN, 
Caterers for the " Golden Gate Cafe,” 

Transportation Building. 

“ TROCADERO,” 

Cor. 16th Street and Michigan Avenue. 


“The Great White Horse” Inn Co., ) 
World’s Columbian > 
Exposition Grounds. ) 
Chicago, III., U. S. A., April 26, 1893. 
Messrs. Joseph Burnett & Co., 

Boston and Chicago. 

Gentlemen : It being our aim to use noth- 
ing but the best, we have decided to use 
Burnett’s Flavoring Extracts exclusively, in 
the ice cream, cakes and pastries served in 
‘‘The Great White Horse” Inn, in the 
grounds of the World’s Columbian Expo- 
sition. Very truly yours, 

T. B. SEELEY, Manager, 
“ The Great White Horse ” Inn Co. 


The Restaurants that have contracted to use Burnett’s Extracts, exclusively, 


are as follows : 


WELLINGTON CATERING CO., 
“GREAT WHITE HORSE” INN, 
THE GARDEN CAFE, 

woman’s building. 


COLUMBIA CASINO CO., 

THE GOLDEN GATE CAFE, 

NEW ENGLAND CLAM BAKE CO., 
BANQUET HALL. 


JOSEPH BURNETT & CO., BOSTON, MASS. 


Pears’ 

Soap 

Wholesome soap is 
one that attacks the 
dirt, but not the liv- 
ing. skin, It is Pears’. 

63 9 







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